


Crying lightning

by frenchkiss



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Accidents, Amnesia, Angst with a Happy Ending, Asexual Character, Crying, Demisexuality, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Fluff, M/M, Medical Inaccuracies, Memory Loss, Sexual Confusion, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-11
Updated: 2017-02-11
Packaged: 2018-09-23 14:49:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 42,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9662045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frenchkiss/pseuds/frenchkiss
Summary: Louis doesn't remember the accident, and when he wakes up he finds that he doesn't remember any of the last ten years of his life either. All he knows is there's some curly-haired bloke by his bed claiming to be the husband he shares a house, a dog, and a life with, two siblings he's never met before waiting for him in the waiting room, and more niggling questions at the back of his head than anyone can physically answer.This really isn't how he planned to spend his Wednesday.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [darlingjustdont](https://archiveofourown.org/users/darlingjustdont/gifts).



> IT'S FINALLY DONE HERE YOU GO SASHA I LOVE YOU SO MUCH I HOPE IT'S EVERYTHING YOU WANTED AND MORE
> 
> Disclaimer: The depiction of asexuality/demisexuality in this fic is based heavily off my own personal experiences with coming to terms with my sexuality and the labels I've dabbled with. I'm not saying this is how everyone who identifies as this sexuality will or should feel this way, and people come to these conclusions and experience these feelings very differently. This is just mine.
> 
> Disclaimer 2: I'm not a doctor so most of my knowledge on amnesia comes from fairly primitive google searches. This fic is probably (definitely) riddled with medical inaccuracies as a result, but I hope that doesn't deter you too much from your overall enjoyment of it!

_ Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. _

His head is  _ pounding.  _ And not in the hungover _ , I know last night was a goodun _ way. No, in the  _ end my life this hurts so fucking much I could scream  _ way. He can barely open his eyes it hurts that bad, and he really, really wants to cry. He wants his mum. He wants it to  _ stop. _

_ Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. _

He thinks he’s in a bed, or maybe he’s floating. Wherever he is is soft, he’s sure of that much. That and the pain in his head. That’s all he knows right now.

_ Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. _

And the beeping. There’s a beeping coming from somewhere, maybe somewhere near his head. Locating things seems like a Herculean task right now. Thinking seems like the hardest thing in the world, so he stays put, eyes still closed, and he listens to the beeping.

_ Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. _

Hold on a minute. There’s a voice talking from somewhere near him too, and it’s a voice he doesn’t think he knows. He doesn’t really know what they’re saying, but the voice is deep and sad. It’s the voice that makes him want to open his eyes, because he wants to know who it is, and maybe try to cheer them up if he can.

Oh, right. He can’t open his eyes, let alone speak. His throat feels clogged anyway, rough and out of use and tired. Everything hurts, he realises with a jolt – it’s not just his head. He tries to fold his hand up into a fist but even that feels like a marathon effort, so he stops trying and just lies there.

Sleep pulls him under not long after.

_ Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. _

*

The next time Louis comes close to waking up, it’s his mum’s voice he hears. She sounds like she’s been crying. His visceral reaction is to force himself awake, so he tries, and he tries, but he can’t. He tries again, but everything is blurry and everything hurts. He’s too weak to work out exactly when he drops back unconscious but it doesn’t take long.

*

When he finally manages to open his eyes an unknown number of hours later, he blinks awake to a person he was not expecting. He had been expecting his mum to be in the room, especially because he remembers hearing her earlier, but instead he’s greeted with the sight of an unfamiliar man. He’s got his shoulders slumped and he’s biting his thumbnail, not looking at Louis but out the window to their left instead. He’s bouncing his knee, the clip clop of his shoe deafeningly loud against the harsh flooring. Louis wants him to stop.

“Um,” he says by way of greeting. His throat itches and his voice comes out rusty, like he hasn’t said anything in a while. He wishes he knew what was going on.

The bloke reacts like he’s been slapped round the face. He leaps to his feet, something akin to a sob leaving his mouth as he crashes to the ground. He sweeps up Louis’s shaky hand in his and starts crying before Louis can put two and two together.

“Louis, fucking hell,” he starts to weep, damp lips pressed onto the back of Louis’s hand. His breath is hot, and it’s only then that Louis notices there’s cannula in his hand. “Louis, oh my… L-Louis, I’m so… I…”

“What’s going on?” Louis says loudly. He doesn’t want to come across as alarmed, but he is. He’s got no idea who this guy is, but the grip he has on Louis’s skin is bordering on painful. “Why am I here?”

The man sniffs. “Fuck, Louis,  _ fuck.  _ You… I could  _ kill  _ you. How many times have I told you not to climb ladders with your phone in your hand?”

“What?” Louis blanches. He’s never even met the guy before, where’s he supposed to have picked up this life advice from? “I fell off a ladder?”

“Yeah, the big one of the left side of the stage, you twat,” huffs the man. “I was in fucking Cornwall, I had to drive for, like, five hours to get to you. I’ve been losing my mind here, they didn’t know if you were gonna…” He trails off, eyes wide and shiny, and he shakes his head like he can’t bear to go on. “ _ Fuck. _ ”

Louis feels sick and he wants his mum. Even after all this ranting he still has no idea who this guy is, let alone why he’s telling Louis how to live his life. He seems oblivious to Louis’s confusion, however, because he hasn’t stopped talking.

“I just… I’ve never been more scared, Lou. I thought…  _ fuck.  _ I don’t… well. You’re awake now, aren’t you? How do you feel, baby?”

_ Baby. Baby. Baby. Baby. _

“Who are you?” Louis blurts instead of answering the question. “I don’t know your name.”

For a second the bloke freezes, then his features turn down into a deep frown. “That’s not funny, Louis,” he says sternly.

“I know it’s not funny,” Louis says hotly, heat prickling at the back of his neck. “Who are you and why are you here? Where’s my mum?”

“Louis, don’t fuck with me,” the man says, but he drops Louis’s hand. “I know you’re the one who just woke up after an accident but, like, I’ve had a really shitty week too.”

“I’m not fucking with you,” Louis says, unable to mask the wobble in his voice. “I’m serious, I don’t know who you are or why you’re here.” As best he can without disturbing all the tubes and machines around him, he hugs his arms around himself. “I want my mum.”

Another sob escapes the guy’s lips and he stands up on shaky legs, nearly stumbling in his hurry to move back from the bed. He covers his mouth with both hands, presumably to stifle more sobs, but it doesn’t do much. Louis really isn’t expecting the almost animalistic wail he lets out and it makes him jump.

“Don’t cry,” he says feebly, though he’s not even sure he’s heard him. “Hey, please,  _ please… _ ”

The door suddenly bangs open and Louis jumps again, letting out a little yelp before his brain catches up with him and he recognises the figure. It’s his mum, but she doesn’t even spare him a glance as she rushes over to the guy and reaches for him, hands smoothing over his shoulders. “ _ Harry, _ ” she says, loud and worried. “Harry, darling, what’s going on?”

_ Harry. Harry. Harry. Harry. _

“I…” the man –  _ Harry –  _ sniffs, shaking his head so his curls bounce all over the place. “He doesn’t know me, Jay. He woke up and he doesn’t…”

“What?” his mum almost yells, nearly knocking them both over in her haste to turn to her son. Louis feels something warm and familiar surge through him for the first time since he woke up, and he offers her a weak wave. His mum chokes out his name and covers her mouth with her hand, abandoning Harry to move over to him.

They look at each other blankly for a couple of seconds before she moves forward and bundles him into a hug, tentative but firm and pretty much everything Louis needs right now. It’s grounding, and he feels tears prick at his eyes. She still smells like she always has.

“Mummy,” he croaks, and he gets held a little tighter in response. A kiss is pressed against his cheek and she pulls back enough to cup his damp face, thumbs chasing away stray tears.

“Darling,” she coos, shaking her head and taking a deep, shaky breath. “Oh, my baby. My stupid,  _ stupid  _ boy.”

“I’m sorry,” Louis says, throat tight. He’s still not really sure what’s happening or what happened to get him here, but he needs his mum to know he’s sorry. “I won’t do it again.”

“Damn right you won’t,” she says with another shake of her head. She positions herself on the bed a little more comfortably and takes his hand in hers. “How are you feeling now?”

“Um,” he says slowly, eyes flickering back over her shoulder to where Harry’s still standing, thumbnail back in his mouth. His eyes are trained on Louis, hard and nervous. “Tired. Disorientated.”

Jay nods and squeezes his fingers. “And your head? How’s your head?”

Louis sighs. “I think…” he starts, then cuts himself off, staring down at his mum’s hand clutching at his. “Mum, why are you wearing a wedding ring?”

“Because I’m married, sweetheart?” Jay laughs awkwardly. She phrases it like a question, but something in her expression shifts, like she’s not sure if he’s taking the piss or not. “I’ve been married for six years now.”

“What?” Louis near-shouts, another sick feeling creeping back into his tummy. This time, though, it feels like a swift punch. “No, you haven’t. You divorced Mark a year ago, remember?”

“Oh my god,” Jay all but whispers, her eyes going almost comically wide. But this isn’t funny, this isn’t funny at all. “Louis, no. That happened when you were seventeen.”

“But I am seventeen,” says Louis slowly, because that’s at least one question he feels like he can answer honestly. “Wait. What’s going on?”

“Oh my god,” Jay says again, and she starts to cry. “Oh my god, oh my  _ god… _ ”

“Mum?” he says loudly. He’s really starting to panic. “Mum, I… what’s happening? Mum? Why are you crying?”

“Baby,” she weeps, shaking her head. She lets go of his hand, just as Harry had when Louis made it clear he doesn’t remember him, and starts pacing the room. Louis tugs the sheets up his body a little higher and whimpers.

“What’s happening to me?”

“Harry, can you go and find the doctor?” Jay asks, turning back to him and letting out another shaky sigh. “I think we, um, well. Can you?”

Harry tears his eyes away from Louis and nods, then disappears out the room without saying anything further. Jay runs a hand through her hair.

“Baby,” she says slowly, like she’s not sure how much she should say. “Baby, I don’t want to panic you but…”

“Who is he?” Louis demands. “Harry… who is he? Why was he in my room when I woke up and you weren’t?”

Jay stares at him for a couple of seconds. She’s nibbling on her lip, and Louis knows that when she does that it’s because she doesn’t want to answer whatever awful question one of her children has thrown at her. It’s usually reserved for one of the twins asking how babies are made, or when Daddy’s coming home. It’s rarely directed at Louis, him being the eldest.

“Louis…” she starts, but Louis can’t take it anymore.

“Who is he?”

“He’s your husband,” Jay blurts, then immediately looks like she regrets saying anything. “That’s… yeah. Harry’s your husband.”

_ Husband. Husband. Husband. Husband. _

“My…” Louis can’t even say the word out loud. Everything is wrong and nothing makes sense. “But I…  _ how?  _ I don’t know him. He’s not…”

“You’re not seventeen, Louis,” Jay carries on. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. We’ll get the doctor and we’ll understand.”

Louis doesn’t say anything else,  _ can’t  _ say anything else because he’s not sure what’s to be said. He’s not seventeen. He’s married. He’s married to a  _ man,  _ which means he probably did the coming out thing, and his mum didn’t hate him for it and he’s okay. That’s… that’s a lot to take in, and it’s not like he wants to be thinking these thoughts when there’s so much else going on but. Seventeen-year-old him was going through a lot of things. And he’s okay.

“Mum, I’m gay,” he announces, perhaps a little redundantly, but he needs to know her reaction and now seems as good a time as ever. “Sorry. I just… I needed to tell you. I’m so sorry.”

Jay just stares, and then she starts to laugh, which seems to shock them both. It’s a beautiful and familiar sound, and she stumbles back over to him and wraps him up in another hug, kissing his forehead before she tucks her face into his neck.

“Louis, you daft boy,” she tuts. “I know, darling. You have a husband.”

“I know,” Louis says, laughing a little himself. It’s a little surreal how much lighter he feels. “I know, I just… I had to tell you myself. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologise,” Jay tells him sternly. “Don’t you ever apologise. You did enough apologising all those years ago and frankly, I hope regardless of whatever’s going on you already know I’ll always love you, if you were gay or straight or attracted to buildings.”

“Attracted to buildings,” Louis snorts, and it’s so like his mum to be blunt like that that it’s just nice and familiar enough between them for a bit. He almost forgets that it’s all gone to shit until Harry comes back into the room with a doctor, and then he feels the smile drop right off his face.

_ Husband. Husband. Husband. Husband. _

“Hello, Louis,” the doctor bristles, striding over to him and unwinding the stethoscope from around his neck. “I’m Dr Fielding, do you mind if I just take a look at you real quick?”

“I guess,” Louis shrugs. He settles back a little more against the pillows, and the doctor slides up his sleep shirt and presses the cold stethoscope onto his chest. It’s only then that Louis makes a startling discovery.

“What the hell?” he says loudly, staring at the huge bird tattooed on his forearm that he can’t quite believe he hadn’t noticed. “Since when do I have tattoos?”

“You have twenty-seven,” Harry says from across the room, then pauses and turns away when Louis’s head snaps up to stare at him. It’s the first time he’s said a single word to Louis since Louis admitted he had no idea who he was, and he’s gone bright red in the face. Louis offers him what he hopes is a kind smile, but he has a feeling it comes out more as a grimace.

“Wow,” he says to nobody in particular. “That’s… wow.”

“Louis, Harry here says you’ve been having some trouble remembering a couple of things,” Dr Fielding says, changing the subject. “Can you tell me a little bit about yourself so we can gauge what’s happened to you?”

“Um, I guess,” Louis nods. “I’m Louis, I’m… well. I think I’m seventeen but I’m not, so I’m told.”

“Louis, can you tell me what year it is please?”

“It’s 2009?” Louis questions, and he feels himself go rigid when his mum gasps and Harry swears. “It’s not 2009, is it?”

“No,” the doctor answers gently, offering a sympathetic smile. “I’m afraid it isn’t. It’s actually 2019.”

“Oh.”

Nobody in the room says anything for a bit, until Harry asks, “so what does this mean, Dr Fielding? If he thinks he’s never met me, what do we do?”

“We wait,” the doctor says, giving Louis’s tense shoulder a quick squeeze. “We’ll need to run a few tests and keep him in here for a few more days, but at the moment there’s not a lot we can do. He did give his head a bit of a bashing, but it’s really too early to say much more.”

“Oh,” Harry says, slumping a little. Jay moves across the room and wraps her arms around him, and it makes something leap a little in Louis’s chest. There’s another awkward silence, so Louis clears his throat to get Dr Fielding’s attention back to him.

“So, like, what actually happened to me?”

“You fell from the top of a ladder,” Dr Fielding says. “The fall itself wasn’t massive, but it’s the way you fell that caused your injuries. As I said, your poor head took a lot of the impact.”

“Bloody hell,” Louis mutters. No wonder his mum is mad at him. “I’m sorry.”

He’s probably apologised more than he’s said anything else since he woke up, and for some reason the words make Harry burst into tears again. Before Louis can even open his mouth he’s fled the room, brushing past Jay even as she tries to grab his wrist. The door slams and Louis feels guiltier than he can ever remember feeling.

“I don’t know what to do,” he says miserably. “I  _ am  _ sorry. I wish I could remember.”

“I know, son,” Dr Fielding reassures. “It’ll be good if you can talk with Harry a bit though. He’ll be the biggest part of the life you can’t remember, and if you think you can deal with hearing some stuff I think it would do you some good. If you don’t feel like it’s going to overwhelm you too much, of course.”

“I… okay,” Louis shakily agrees. He clasps his hands together nervously. “Can I have some water please?”

“Of course,” the doctor nods. “How are you feeling aside from all this? Do you reckon you could stomach some solid food?”

“I’d like to try,” Louis nods. “And I’d like, um, I’d like to talk to Harry too, I think.”

“Here, I’ll nip and get you something,” Jay offers. “How about a sandwich? A jacket potato?”

“The potato, please,” Louis answers with a small smile. “And a bottle of water and maybe some Malteasers.”

Jay snorts. “Yeah, right. A banana or an apple, more like.” She walks over to him and kisses his forehead, brushing his matted fringe behind his ear gently. “Coming right up, anyway. And I’ll see if I can find Harry.”

“Thank you,” Louis murmurs. His mum waves back at him as she heads out the door, then it’s just him and the doctor.

“I’ll let you eat and rest up a bit, then I’ll arrange some tests for you later this afternoon,” he tells Louis, and Louis nods. “I’ll pop back in a few hours, alright?”

Louis nods again. “Alright,” he echoes. “See you later then.”

“Hey,” Dr Fielding says just before he goes, “I know you’re freaked out, son, but the chances of this just being a temporary thing are high. I’ve seen lots of patients recover faster than they were expecting. And you’re young and healthy, so at the moment I don’t see any reason to doubt a full recovery from you.”

“Thank you,” Louis says again, staring down at his lap. The doctor leaves and he’s suddenly alone, and he’s grateful. He’s definitely got a good few minutes before his mum returns, so he takes the time to let himself have the cry he’s been holding in ever since he watched his mum’s face drop back there.

It’s cathartic and it feels good to not cry in front of Harry, even though he’s seen Harry cry more than once and if they’re married… well. Harry must have seen him cry at least once.

He wonders how long him and Harry have been married. He wonders how long they were dating beforehand, and he wonders who proposed to who. He wonders if Harry sleeps on the right side of the bed or the left, and he wonders what their house is like. He wonders if he’ll ever be able to remember when everything he’s just wondered feels like a dream, like something so far off it’s practically unobtainable.

He wonders if Harry’s mad at him for not being able to remember.

He wonders if he’ll ever get to a point where everything feels normal and relaxed, and not like he’s been run over by a freight train.

Harry does come back eventually, holding a polyester container and water bottle in one hand and his phone in the other. The first thing Louis notices upon his return is that Harry has really big hands. The second thing he notices is that his hands still haven’t stopped shaking, and the third is the wedding ring.

“Hi,” he greets softly, moving across the room in small, jumpy steps, like Louis is an animal that could easily be spooked. “We got you a jacket potato with cheese and extra butter. They tried to put salad in the box but I said you wouldn’t like that.”

Louis grins despite himself. “You’re not wrong,” he says, accepting the meal gratefully. “I hate it when soggy tomato…”

“Touches the nice food on the plate,” Harry finishes for him with a shrug. His cheeks colour themselves red again. “Sorry,” he tacks on. “I just… I know you. And I know that’s probably really freaky but I don’t know how to… well, how to not be your husband, I guess.”

“Yeah,” is all Louis can answer, then he shoves a huge mouthful of potato in so he has an excuse not to say anything else. It’s good – not as good as his mum’s, but he wasn’t expecting it to be. He chews, swallows, then reaches for the bottle of water. “So, um, if we know each other can you tell me a bit about myself?”

Harry’s eyes go wide. “Really?” he questions, tentative. “Are you sure that won’t, like, really freak you out?”

Louis shrugs. “I dunno. I wanna remember though, so if something you say triggers it then…” He trails off and takes another bite of potato.

Harry nods and takes a seat, the same seat he was in when Louis woke up. “You’re twenty-seven,” he starts. “And I’m twenty-five.” His shoulders slump. “Not… not that you asked. You’re probably not interested.”

“I’m interested,” Louis answers, voice small. It’s only a bit of a lie too – the only thing he knows about this person at all is that his name is Harry and that they’re married. He should probably want to know more.

“Okay,” Harry says, and clearly he must know Louis better than Louis anticipated because he sounds very much like he doesn’t believe him. “You work in a theatre,” he continues, unprompted. “You’re the stage manager of the theatre in our little city.”

“Oh?” Louis says, interest piqued. He hadn’t really thought about what job he’d be in now, but seventeen-year-old him always thought he’d be something like a teacher, or maybe just working some random nine to five. His ambitions were always a little bit… well, not there, at least not at seventeen. But this job sounds pretty interesting, actually, and something he’d like to know more about. “Do I like it?”

Harry smiles sadly. “You adore it, Lou. Since you started working this job you’ve never been happier, I swear.”

Louis copies his smile. “Well, that’s…” He pauses to swallow, throat too dry again. “That’s great.”

“Yeah,” Harry agrees, toying with a loose thread at the hem of his jumper. “It is. You, um, well. You proposed not long after you got it as well.”

“Ah,” Louis says with a nod, then doesn’t offer anything else on the subject. His head feels like its pounding, and he decides to steer the conversation elsewhere. “Do we, um, I guess we live together then.”

Harry nods. “We do,” he confirms, almost sighing. “We’ve got a little two-bedroom house on the outskirts of town.” He coughs. “And we’ve got a dog too. We got the dog about a year ago.” When he chuckles, it’s almost to himself. “You named him Fluffy.”

Louis barks a startled laugh at that, the first time he’s laughed properly since he woke up. Harry’s head flies up from where it’s been bowed, and Louis hurries to cover his mouth before he has to ask, “wait, and you let me do that?”

“You’re very stubborn,” Harry points out, and yeah, at least Louis can say for sure that that bit of him hasn’t changed. “And you can be quite persuasive, you know, when you need to be.”

Louis has no idea if Harry means it to sound as coy as it does, and it’s probably said in a tone they use around each other plenty, but Louis is still seventeen and he’s only just worked out he likes boys and then there’s also… that. That part of him that still remains unmentioned and untouched, deep in his subconscious. He wonders if he sussed it out and if Harry knows. Harry  _ must  _ know – it’s the kind of thing they’ll have to have talked about if they’re married, for fuck’s sake – and he quashes the thought that someone else might know before he’s even able to admit it to himself.

He changes the subject again hastily. “Tell me where we met?”

If Harry realises how uncomfortable he’s just made Louis, he’s either ignoring it or he’s just oblivious. Either way he fixes Louis with another soft smile, twisting his wedding ring round and round his ring finger.

“I was sixteen,” he says serenely, like it’s a story he’s never going to tire of telling. “You were eighteen, and the loudest person I’d ever known. We were at this, like, theatre camp up in Glasgow for the summer. Your mum let you go because you wanted to do everything drama-related that you could, and my mum made me go because I was ridiculously shy and she wanted me to get a bit more confidence.”

“Woah,” Louis says, shaking his head. “So we’re like proper teenage sweethearts then.”

Harry grins but he doesn’t meet Louis’s eye. “Yeah, we were,” he agrees. “We were… fuck, Lou. We were brilliant. Even all these years on we still love each other so much and, like,  _ fuck.”  _ His grip on his wedding ring tightens. Louis wonders briefly where his own is. “When I first met you, you were in these toilets, right? And you were singing to yourself.”

“Right,” Louis drawls, unsure of where this is going.

“And, like, I was just watching you in the doorway and you just had your knob out peeing freely and I just… I just watched like some pervert but you were fine with it, and when you saw me there you turned and you laughed and you called me a curly haired cunt.”

“Oh my god,” Louis says dumbly, another laugh bubbling out of him without warning. “I sound like a right charmer.”

“You were,” Harry says, and Louis has to turn away as he notices the tears threatening to spill from his eyes again. “The next day they announced our parts in the production, right? And you got the part you wanted and you just… you leapt at me. You jumped right into my arms and you wouldn’t let me put you down.”

“Oh wow,” says Louis. “I really am a charmer.”

“I wouldn’t want you any other way,” Harry tells him, so painfully earnest that Louis almost wants to reach out and touch him. “So we spent those weeks in Glasgow together – we were inseparable, any of our friends will tell you that – and then we had to move back home.”

“Where are you from?” Louis asks.

“Cheshire,” Harry says. “Not too far from you, to be honest. But we didn’t see each other much for a while. In fact, it was closer to two years later that we saw each other in person again.”

“Why?” Louis has to ask. “Did we just not make the effort or something?”

Harry shrugs. “We texted a lot back in the early days. My phone bills used to almost send my mum into cardiac arrest, I swear.”

“I sense a but coming,” Louis says.

Harry shrugs again. “Life happened. You went off to uni and I was still in sixth form. I felt… I felt like you wouldn’t want someone like me, you know? I was essentially still a child, and you were off at uni having the time of your life.”

“Did we even kiss up in Glasgow?”

“I… a bit, yeah,” Harry admits, turning red. “You were my first kiss.”

“That’s…” Louis starts, then stops. “Wow, okay. Pressure, much.”

“Louis,” Harry says quietly, and he shifts so they’re making eye contact now, his stare a little more intense than Louis would like. “Louis, can I say something?”

“What?” Louis asks, immediately defensive for some reason. “Did I say something wrong?”

“No, no,” Harry’s quick to say, but he looks as frustrated as Louis feels. “Look, I just… it’s all very well and good me telling you how we met and stuff, but it’s not gonna change much. I’ve never felt more helpless in my entire life and the person I need right now is right in front of me and… I just want you to know, like, that I want to be here for you but I don’t want you to get upset or resent me if I can’t for a bit. You’re still my husband but I’m a stranger to you. I just…” He sighs and he’s looking at the floor when he speaks again. “You can say no but can I hold… I mean, like, just hug you? Please?”

“Um,” Louis says, a little stunned. He hadn’t been expecting that. “I guess, yeah.”

“You guess,” Harry deadpans, then runs his hand through his hair. “You can just say no, I… I get it.”

“No, you can,” Louis says, sitting up a little straighter and awkwardly holding out his arms in readiness. “I just wasn’t expecting you to ask, I’m sorry.”

When Harry does eventually lift himself up and move towards Louis to hug him it’s slow, like he’s half-convinced Louis’s going to retract his statement any second. But Louis won’t, because he’s tired and even though he’s a bit disgusting and he’s still achy, he trusts Harry not to comment or hurt him. And he’ll never admit it out loud but he could really do with a fucking cuddle, and it strikes him that if anyone’s going to know the way he needs to be cuddled right now it’ll be Harry.

The hug is definitely more intimate than he’s anticipating, more intimate than anything he can ever remember experiencing. He’s not wrong though – Harry’s arms wrap themselves around him like a vine, high enough on his body so they don’t brush his tummy but low enough that Louis feels all-encompassed and secure. His body seems to react to the touch and he finds himself arching into it. Harry smells like salt and there’s the barest hint of cigarette there, and it’s not familiar but he doesn’t mind.

Harry, on the other hand, seems to have no qualms in telling Louis exactly what he thinks. “You smell awful, babe,” he chuckles wetly, breath damp on Louis’s neck. “You could really do with a shower.”

Louis wants to snap, but he refrains. He knows Harry’s only teasing, but it’s still just a tad on the raw side and he’s so, so tired. “I’ll ask for one when they take me for the tests,” he mumbles, not meaning to burst Harry’s bubble but accepting he probably has.

Harry nods into his shoulder, takes another deep breath and then pulls back. He moves his hand up and trails it down Louis’s cheek, and Louis has to use every ounce of willpower in his exhausted body not to flinch. It must show on his face, however, because Harry seems to catch himself and he moves back quickly, dropping back into his seat and running a hand through his curls again. It must be a nervous habit, Louis decides.

“Do you want me to go?” Harry says in a low voice after a few moments of painful silence. “I’m sorry, I… I made you uncomfortable and that was… I forgot for a second, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Louis says, keen to brush it off. In the grand scheme of things he has bigger issues than a lingering hug off his husband. “I… this must be a bloody nightmare for you too. I’m sorry.”

Harry nods tightly and stares back at the floor. It’s another achingly long few minutes before either of them say anything again.

“I… I don’t want to overstep my mark here, but I think you should meet your siblings.”

Confused, Louis looks up from where he’s been (stupidly) toying with his cannula. “Meet my siblings?” he echoes, baffled. “I think I’ve met my siblings before, Harry. Do you mean see them again?”

“No, I…” Harry starts, then sighs. “You know how you weren’t aware your mum had remarried?” Louis nods, then freezes as realisation hits him. “Yeah, she, um… she had twins.”

“Twins,” parrots Louis. He grabs his water bottle again and takes a hearty swig. He still feels sick but he kind of wishes it was vodka. “My mum had twins.”

“Yeah, babe,” Harry says, then clears his throat awkwardly as the term of endearment slips out by accident. “You’ve got your little brother now.”

“A b-brother?” Louis can’t help but stumble over his words, because he might have just been told he’s married and that he’s lost nearly a decade’s worth of memories but for some reason this piece of news feels like it hits harder. “Two brothers or…?”

Harry shakes his head and smiles. “Brother and a sister. Ernie and Doris. They’re gorgeous, Lou, absolutely gorgeous. They’re coming up to six now, actually, getting big.”

“Fuck,” Louis whispers, and wipes a tear he didn’t even realise had escaped from his cheek. Knowing he might not remember his little siblings grow up hurts a lot and he has to bite his lip to stifle another sob. “ _ Fuck. _ ”

“Hey,” Harry says, hopping out of his chair and moving a little closer to Louis, confused. “Hey, I… are you crying? I didn’t mean to make you cry, I’m so sorry.”

“Can we, like, make a deal now?” Louis croaks, wiping frantically at his face. “Can we stop apologising to one another every thirty seconds?”

Clearly this wasn’t what Harry was expecting, but once it looks like his brain has caught up with him he closes his gaping mouth and nods. “Yeah,” he nods. “Yeah, yeah, we, um, we probably should.”

“Thank you,” Louis says quietly. “I just… I feel like that could become a thing and, like, you don’t need to apologise for telling me I’ve got new siblings I can’t remember.”

“Sorry.”

“ _ Harry. _ ”

“Sorry!” Harry says again, then swears as Louis snorts wetly. “Wow, Louis.”

“I appreciate the sentiment anyway,” Louis says, and just for a split second he contemplates reaching out for Harry’s hand. He squashes the urge down quickly and clears his throat again, pushing away the tears. “Can I meet them then?”

Harry nods. “Yeah, course. You don’t need to ask, they’re your siblings.”

“Right, right,” Louis says. He bites down the  _ sorry  _ on his tongue and hurries to move the empty jacket potato box out the way. “Ernie and Doris, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Harry nods again. “You call Ernie your little lad though, and your nickname for Doris is Doormouse.”

“Doormouse?” Louis has to ask, raising an eyebrow. Harry shrugs, but his smile is still there, soft and fond.

“She’s just always been Doormouse to you. And she loves that her biggest brother has a special name for her,” Harry explains, shrugging his shoulders once more. “They adore you, Lou. And you’ll adore them.”

“I know,” Louis says, a little affronted he even needs to be told that.  “I…”

“Right, right, let me go and get them,” Harry says, face dropping a little. Louis senses he realises he’s pissed Louis off a bit.

_ Right.  _ Years of marriage and all that.

He scurries out of there, leaving Louis alone once again, and it’s a good ten minutes before he returns. Louis has a feeling he’s having a bit of a chat with his mum about him, and it makes him feel a bit uneasy. He distracts himself for a bit by examining his tattoos again – why the fuck he has a cup of tea of all things he has no idea – but looks up again when he hears light knuckles rapping on the door.

And the sight that greets him is one he’s not ready for.

Logically he understands that Harry was telling Louis about the nicknames not to patronise, but to prepare him. Logically he understands that his two six-year-old siblings aren’t going to understand that Louis’s memory has gone funny, and logically he understands that they want to keep things as normal for the pair of them as they can.

But when Harry comes in with his little sister balanced on his shoulders, making pretend airplane noises and swooping her high and low, that’s when he cracks.

He catches his mum’s eye from behind Harry, where she’s stood holding the hand of a little boy with blond hair and blue eyes. Even though they’re half-siblings Louis’s a little overwhelmed straight off the bat how much they look like him. They’re both gorgeous and Louis wants to hug them and never put them down. Lucky for him, they seem to share that idea.

“Lou-ee!” Doris screeches from atop Harry’s shoulders, wiggling her little legs until Harry disentangles her and sets her back on the floor. “Lou-ee!”

“Hey, Doormouse,” he coos, holding his hand out for her. She goes to scrabble onto the bed, but Jay tuts and she freezes, looking up at him with big eyes. “Hey, no, it’s okay, Mum, she can come up here.”

“Hmm, okay,” Jay says warningly. “Darling, be careful of your brother, okay? He’s a bit unwell at the moment.”

“Uhuh,” she nods obediently, then seconds later crashes into Louis’s arms. Louis squeezes her back tightly and nearly cries there and then again. He doesn’t recognise her even a little bit but this feels like coming home, more so than anything he can ever remember has.

“Missed you, Lou-ee,” she mumbles, pulling back enough to plant a little kiss on the corner of his mouth. Then she pouts at him. “You made Mummy and Harry cry a  _ lot. _ ”

Instead of being affronted by this telling off as he would be from anyone else, all Louis does is smile sadly and draw her in under his arm again. “I’m sorry, Doormouse,” he says, kissing the top of her head. “You know I’d never make Mummy cry without meaning to.”

“Good,” she says firmly. “Love you, Lou-ee.”

“I love you too,” he near-chokes out, cuddling her as tight as he dares. “I love you very very much.”

He dares to look at his mum, who also looks near tears. He wonders how often these two naïve little darlings have seen their mum cry recently and he feels incredibly guilty for it. He shifts Doris a little so she’s on his left side and opens his arm for Ernie on the other side.

“Come here, little lad,” he says with as much enthusiasm as he can muster. “You didn’t think you could get away without a cuddle, did you?”

Ernie looks a lot more nervous than his sister had, but he toddles forward and moves towards Louis’s open arms. Louis hoists him up and kisses the top of his head too, and Ernie shuffles forward enough to wrap his arms around Louis’s tummy, burying his face into Louis’s chest.

“Hey there,” Louis says, chuckling a little as Ernie grips on a little tighter. “Nice to see you too, buddy, I’ve missed you.”

He pretends not to notice the way that Jay sidles over to Harry and wraps him up in a hug, and instead focuses on the children in his arms. Both of them are beautiful, familiar in a way he can’t quite make out, and they smell like home. It’s harrowing and horrible, but he knows for damn sure that even if he can’t remember anything else about them, he’s going to make this whole thing as normal for them as he can.

Nothing feels like it’ll ever be normal again, though.

*

Countless tests and countless hours later see Louis back in his bed, this time in cleaner sheets and clean pyjamas. He’d asked to shower, and it turns out the little side room in the hospital he’s in has an ensuite bathroom, so while his mum (and presumably Harry) head off to grab him another meal he turns the water as hot as he dares and scrubs himself raw. The time alone is something he’s craving after hours of being poked and prodded, and he’s also kind of sick of seeing both his mum and Harry’s sad faces.

He also takes the time here to examine his naked body. It’s clear from his figure that he’s aged a bit, and he still isn’t over the sheer amount of ink he has littering his arms and chest. Some of it is frankly bizarre – the skateboarding stick man, the fat bird, the bloody cup of tea to name a few – but others his eyes linger on for longer. His intricate compass, for example, makes his heart jackhammer in his chest once he’s wetly traced over it, and he can’t understand  _ why. _

He shuts off the water and dries himself off. There’s a toothbrush by the sink and he contemplates cleaning his teeth, but then he remembers that food is on its way and he refrains. He purposely wants to avoid the sink above the mirror too, because he’s not sure how ready he is to see his face at twenty-seven.  _ Just a little longer,  _ he thinks.

Padding naked back into the room, he finds a sports bag on his bed that he assumes is full of his own stuff, and he’s not wrong. He opens it and finds a bag of toiletries, then folded underneath those are several pairs of pyjama bottoms and a few soft t-shirts. They all have slogans written across them, and he feels heat prickle at the back of his neck when he realises he only recognises the Incredible Hulk ones.

_ What the fuck is a Bazinga anyway? _

Sulking a little, he tugs the Hulk ones on, not bothering with boxers, then grabs the first random t-shirt from the pile. He barely spares it a glance before he yanks it over his head, then he moves the bag to the corner of the room and clambers back into bed.

He’s only alone with his thoughts for ten minutes or so before there’s a knock of the door. Louis shuffles out of bed to unlock it, smiling awkwardly when he sees Harry and his mum there. The smile grows wider and a lot more genuine when he sees what they’ve got in their hands though.

“Oh my god,” he groans delightedly, making grabby hands for the McDonald’s bags. “God, maybe you do know me quite well.”

Harry snorts and moves past him, taking a seat on the chair he was on previously. “You’re quite a predictable person, Louis,” he tells him, perhaps a little drier than he intends. Louis drops his gaze and snatches the bag from him, perhaps a little rougher than intended, and moves to perch on the end of his bed.

“I hope McDonald’s haven’t made too many changes to their menu in ten years,” he offers instead, unwrapping the bag. He hears his mum laugh at that and it makes him smile again, even if just a little.

“Not enough for you to change your usual fare, darling,” she says, dropping into the seat next to Harry. “Here, we got you a Coke too.”

“Thanks,” Louis says, then pulls out his Big Mac and makes a happy noise. Out of habit he peels back the top of the bun, and he’s surprised to see the gherkin already gone. “Oh, thank god, did they finally stop putting gherkins in these?”

He watches Harry shrug. “Predictable person, babe,” he says again, then balks at the term of endearment. Louis feels a little awkward so takes a huge bite of his burger instead, and when he looks back up his mum is stroking over the backs of Harry’s knuckles. It’s small but enough to make him feel like shit.

For the first time since waking up, he wants to remember Harry.

“Thanks,” he says, in lieu of anything better. He takes another bite of his burger then pops it to one side, reaching into the bag for the chips. “Did you get me…?”

“Red sauce?” Harry finishes, then blushes as he nods. “Sorry. Yeah, here.”

He digs around in the pocket of his Harrington jacket, then produces two little pots of ketchup. Louis takes them with another murmured thank-you and busies himself with his food again. He’s rather grateful when his mum speaks instead of Harry this time.

“We bumped into the doctor again on our walk up,” she says, her hand resting on Harry’s knee. Louis pointedly doesn’t look at it. “He was kind enough not to mention the McDonald’s, but he did say that he’s going to try and rush your test results.” She pauses. “Other than the, you know, memory loss…” She pauses again, like she’s composing herself. “Other than that and the frozen shoulder you’re fine, love.”

“So I can go home soon?” Louis asks, tentative. He’s not entirely sure where home is and that’s a weird thought. “That’s… okay.”

“Obviously it’s still early stages,” Jay’s quick to add. “They still have to make sure you’re not hurt inside or something like that.”

“Ah.”

“Yeah,” Jay says, then swallows. “But he called you a medical miracle. You’re… well. You’re doing surprisingly well considering the fall you had.”

“Go me,” Louis says flatly. There’s a drop of ketchup on his pyjama bottoms but he ignores it. “What time is it?”

“Half seven,” Jay says after a quick glance at her phone. “We’ll probably have to leave around nine.”

“Fair enough,” Louis nods. “So I’ll be going home… tomorrow? Or the day after?”

“I don’t know, love,” says Jay. “Soon though, hopefully.”

“I’m tired,” Louis says, then sighs. “That feels a bit ridiculous to say. How long was I out for?”

“Nine days,” Harry says with a grimace. “Longest nine days of my life.” He must catch Louis wince because he immediately goes bright red and bows his head, hiding behind his hair. “Sorry.”

“I thought we said we were gonna limit the use of our sorrys,” Louis says. He really would do anything to dispel this awkwardness between them. Thankfully, it’s enough to make Harry look at him and offer a brief smile.

“Sorry.”

Louis snorts and shakes his head. “Harry.”

“ _ God, _ ” Harry groans, throwing his head back. “It’s… I just, I  _ am  _ sorry. I don’t know what to say to you right now.”

Louis gulps and ducks his head, trying to set his face into something other than a grimace. “That’s okay,” he says after a second, though his voice comes out strangled and he’s pretty sure they can both tell that this is not, in fact, okay. “Can you tell me more about yourself instead, maybe?”

Harry’s eyes go wide. “Really?” he asks, biting his lip. “You… what do you want to know?”

Louis shrugs. “How old did you say you were?”

“I’m twenty-five.”

Louis nods. “And where do you work?”

“I work as a freelance photographer,” Harry says, sinking into the chair next to the bed. He toys with his wedding ring a little, and Louis tries to look anywhere but at Harry’s hands. “I mostly photograph weddings and christenings, stuff like that.”

“Cool,” Louis says after a beat, for lack of anything else to say. “Do you, um, do you like it?”

Harry smiles, almost to himself. “Yeah, I love it. I love it a lot. I just… the only downside is that sometimes I’m away from home for a few days at a time.”

“Oh, so it’s like up and down the country?”

Harry nods. “Yeah. I was in Cornwall when I got the call about, um, your fall. Bloody four hour drive away.”

“Whoops?” Louis offers, then chews on a fry. “Well, you must be pretty good if you’re getting work in Cornwall.”

Another nod. “I like to think so. I’m doing… well, we’re doing well financially and stuff. We’ve been living in our house for about a year and we’ve just had the bathroom done up.” He snorts. “And you want to get another dog.”

It’s enough to make Louis smile – he’s always loved and wanted dogs, and now it sounds like present-him is finally doing something he’s always wanted. He has to mentally high five himself for that. “Maybe I should let you be the one to name this one,” he chuckles.

“Yeah,” Harry smiles, chuckling himself. “I want a girl dog this time. A little shiatzu or something.”

“What breed is Fluffy?” Louis asks. “Do you have any photos?”

Harry nods again and slides an iPhone – or what looks like an iPhone, it’s a lot more techy than the clunky second-hand one Louis remembers having back in the day – out of his pocket and holds it out. The background on his phone is actually a picture of Louis, wearing a bright coloured sports jumper and cuddling a black, shaggy dog under one of his arms.

“You sent me that selfie about three weeks ago,” Harry says, voice warm and fond. “You both just look… well. I couldn’t not make it my phone background, let’s put it that way.”

“I look tired,” Louis observes, a little wistful. “The dog is gorgeous though. I can’t wait to meet him.”

Harry purses his lips. “We’d been apart a few days,” he says, quieter than before. “Neither of us… my work sucks in that respect because I know I definitely don’t sleep as well without you, and you’re kinda… kinda the same.”

Louis looks down at his lap. “Oh.”

Harry sighs and sniffs, moving back on his seat. “I don’t… I’m sorry, Lou, I really am. I’m not trying to make you feel, like, guilty or anything, I just… I’m telling you facts? Oh,  _ fuck. _ ”

“Harry,” Jay says gently, and for a second Louis almost jumps. He’d forgotten his mum was still in the room. “It’s fine, love. Louis understands. It’s hard for all of us.”

“I…” Louis nods, then hurries to pop the rest of his burger in his mouth. He doesn’t know what to say, yet again. “Yeah, Harry, it’s fine, I promise.”

Harry doesn’t look at him again, and Louis watches his slumped shoulders rise and fall sloppily, like he can’t get his breathing steady. Jay pinches the bridge of her nose and groans, and Louis wants to cry again.

“I’m going to see Lottie, see if she and Tommy’ll take the kids to McDonald’s or something,” she says. “I’ll, um, I’ll just…” She trails off, pointing to the door, but over the top of Louis’s head she mouths  _ talk to him  _ and points back to Harry before she sweeps out of there.

The silence is a little uncomfortable, and Louis almost doesn’t want to break it, but he’s also never been one to sit quietly. So he clears his throat. “Harry?”

Harry looks up, his teeth still nibbling at his bottom lip. “Yeah?”

“Do you…” He has no idea what he wants to ask, so he trails off and sighs. “Do you think you could go and get me a cuppa?”

Disappointment flashes across Harry’s handsome face and after a moment he nods. “Sure,” he grunts, then stands. “Milk and two sugars, same as always?”

Horrified, Louis splutters, “what? Why would I put sugar in my tea? That’s  _ horrid. _ ”

Harry stares at him for a few moments, then chuckles to himself. “You don’t, I’m… I’m only teasing. Sorry.”

Louis pouts, then he laughs, but it’s reluctant, almost, like he can’t understand why he found it funny. Then Harry leaves without another word and he settles back against the pillows and toys with a loose thread on the duvet, before he realises.

_ Wait, did he just think about Harry as handsome? _

Five, ten, fifteen minutes pass. Bored and impatient, Louis snaps the telly on but there are way, way too many channels so he leaves it on a random sitcom and mutes it because the inane voices were giving him a headache. Harry returns a few minutes later and hands him the polystyrene cup in silence, and after an awkward, murmured thanks Louis takes it and sips at it slowly.

Harry doesn’t leave again, and Louis doesn’t know if or how he can ask him to. They sit in a strange, stony silence for a lot of the day while the Hollyoaks omnibus plays on in the background. Sometimes they exchange glances, glances that make Louis squirm and Harry sigh.

He just can’t seem to stop sighing.

He doesn’t know what time it is when the door bursts open and he nearly jumps out of his skin. By the looks of it, Harry nearly does too, but then his face lights up with recognition and within seconds he’s ploughing into the arms of this stranger, letting out a croak of something Louis can’t distinguish as he goes.

“Haz,” the stranger mumbles, voice equally as hoarse. “I’m so sorry, mate, I’m so, so sorry.”

The first thing Louis notices about this one is that he’s absolutely gorgeous. He’s tall, taller even than Harry, dressed simply yet immaculately. Tattoos cover both his hands, and his hair is clipped short, short enough to match the scruff decorating his cheeks and chin. Harry clings to him and Louis can’t make out their conversation, but he can make out Harry’s quiet sniffs and sobs.

The embrace is clearly very intimate, and Louis isn’t  _ jealous,  _ per se. It just strikes him as a bit odd that Harry can hug someone like that when he’s spent the past two days professing his commitment to Louis more times than Louis can count. But then he remembers that he’s not the only one feeling sorry for themselves right now, and his mum  _ did  _ tell him to try and be a bit nicer to Harry.

“Where’s Z?” Harry asks, muffled.

_ Who the heck is Z?,  _ Louis thinks.

“Stuck in the States,” the stranger says grimly. “And we tried to work out the timelines on the phone last night and we worked out that Louis would know him through… well. He thought it might be best if he stayed.”

Harry lets out an odd noise, a mix between a growl and a scoff. “What the fuck?”

“I know,” the stranger says with a heavy sigh. Louis is so tired of everyone sighing all the time. “We’ve, um, we’ve had a bit of a fight.”

“Another one?” Harry says sadly. “But I thought you’d sorted out…”

“Not about that,” the stranger says quickly, like he’s keen to shut Harry up before the words are even out. “About this. About Louis.”

Louis’s surprised they’ve even remembered he’s in the room because neither of them have even bothered to look at him since they tumbled into each other’s arms. He doesn’t know either of them, but he knows he doesn’t like anything about this situation, and that includes having his husband cuddling another man.

To quash this feeling down, he clears his throat.

The hug breaks but the pair stay huddled close, Harry leaning into this new bloke’s shoulder like it’s something he’s done a thousand times before. Louis can’t help but wonder if present-day him is comfortable with his husband snuggling up with other people who are  _ that  _ fit. “Who are you?” he asks, perhaps a little too snappily. “Do I know you?”

“Jesus Christ,” the stranger breathes out, instead of giving him an actual answer. “He really is seventeen again, isn’t he?”

“Yep,” Harry says forlornly. “And you didn’t meet him ‘til he was nineteen, right?”

“First year of uni, yeah,” the stranger mutters. He runs a hand over his beard and shakes his head. “Louis, hi. I’m… I’m Liam. I’m your best mate.”

“My best mate?” Louis repeats, incredulous. “No, no, no, I don’t think so, pal. I think you’ll find that’s Stan.”

Harry and the stranger – Liam – share a glance. “Yeah, Stan is still a good mate of yours,” Liam nods. He sounds a little hurt. “But we’re best best friends, Lou. I was best man at your wedding.” Then he looks at Harry. “You’re both my best friends, to be fair, but…”

“No, but if we’re being honest you’re Louis’s best friend,” Harry says, squeezing his shoulder. Liam goes to argue but Harry cuts in. “No, Li. It’s fine. I’m serious, you are Louis’s best friend.”

Liam sighs and blinks a few times. “We met at uni,” he tells him, turning back to face Louis on the bed. “We met in choir.”

“Choir?” Louis sneers, dubious. “What the fuck? There’s no way I would have joined a choir.”

Liam shrugs. “But you… you did. You were in it with me for three years.”

Louis crosses his arms. “No way,” he says again, firm. “I don’t believe you.”

Liam shrugs again. “Ask your mum if you want, I…” And then he slumps, defeated. “Why doesn’t he believe me, Haz?”

“It isn’t to get at you, Li, I promise,” Harry says quietly, and he wraps an arm around Liam’s waist. Louis doesn’t even bother pretending not to glare. “He’s… there’s a lot he doesn’t get, not yet.”

“ _ He  _ is still in the room,” Louis snaps. “Can you guys leave if you’re going to talk about me like I’m some child?”

Hurt flickers across both their faces, and Liam opens his mouth – probably to argue but Louis doesn’t much care to know – but Harry tugs him towards the door and out of there before he can. The door slams closed, and Louis lets out a long exhale through his mouth, pinching the bridge of his nose.

He barely has seconds to process what just happened before the door opens again, and he almost breathes a sigh of relief because it’s Lottie, not Harry or that Liam bloke.

Almost.

“Lotts…”

“What the fuck was that?” she hisses, cutting him right off before he can really begin. “Why the fuck does Harry always seem to leave this room in tears? And Liam? Liam, your best friend of eight years? He never cries, Louis.”

“I don’t know a Liam,” Louis whines, kicking at the sheets like a petulant child. “And as far as I’m concerned my best friend is Stan.”

“No,” Lottie says harshly. “You love Stan, we all do, but  _ Liam  _ is your best friend. After Harry and Mum he’s probably the person you’re closest to in the whole world. And you just made him fucking cry. So let me ask you again. What the fuck was that?”

“I’m not sure what that was, because all I was aware of happening is two people coming into my room uninvited and talking about me like I’m not there.”

“Those two people love you more than anything,” Lottie spits. “Everything any of us are doing right now comes from a place of love, and it’s shitty that you’re trying to push us all away.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say, Lottie. This is the worst feeling in the whole fucking world, and I’m  _ confused  _ and I’m  _ scared. _ ”

“I want you to get how shitty this is for all of us, Lou,” Lottie snaps back. Then her face softens. “I can’t even imagine what it would be like to forget my life, Louis, I can’t.” She moves forward to perch on the edge of Louis’s bed, and she grabs for his hand, her immaculate nails scratching over his knuckles. “But you have this mean streak, babe, and you’re taking it out on  _ Harry  _ of all people, who is the nicest person in the whole damn world on top of being your husband. I can’t… I love you both  _ so much,  _ and I can’t stand by and watch you break his heart like this.”

“But I don’t know him, Lottie,” Louis says forlornly. “I don’t know what I’m doing. The only thing I know is that I  _ don’t  _ know who he is.”

“Louis,” Lottie says again, a lot softer than before. “Babe, this is going to be a lot easier on both of you – well, all of us, really – if you just… I dunno, roll with it, I guess? This isn’t something you’re going to adapt to straight away, and nobody expects you to, but none of us are your enemies. Least of all Harry. He’s your husband, he’s… he’s the love of your damn life, Louis.”

“He isn’t because I don’t know who he is,” Louis argues weakly. “How can I roll with it when I don’t know who he is?”

“Mum says he’s been telling you about your life together,” Lottie says hotly, but she keeps scratching at his hand soothingly. “And obviously it’s not expected that just hearing that is going to bring your memories back or whatever, but come on, Louis. You have to be able to tell how much he loves you. I’ve never seen him like this. He’s heartbroken.”

“So am I,” Louis croaks. “It’s pretty bloody heartbreaking to wake up and feel like a stranger in your own body.”

“I know, and I told you I can’t imagine it, I really can’t,” Lottie says, softer this time. “But it’s not permanent, is it? The doctors definitely don’t seem to think so, and the last thing you want is to drive anyone away because your seventeen-year-old self was a dickhead.”

Louis gulps and lets the insult slide. “I just… I can’t imagine myself loving someone that much.”

“But you love him so much,” Lottie reassures, and her eyes flutter closed for a second, her mouth curling up into a gentle smile. “And he loves you like mad. It’s like… it’s like where there’s a Louis there has to be a Harry. It won’t work without you being together.”

“What won’t work?” Louis asks, chewing on his thumbnail.

Lottie shrugs. “I dunno, the universe?”

“But how can we be together if I don’t feel anything for him?”

Lottie squeezes his hand again. “You will. You  _ will,  _ Louis. This isn’t going to be forever, I promise, and if it is… well. I’m not going to let either of us think about that. You’re going to remember.”

“I’ll definitely try,” Louis says weakly. “I’ll try but… oh,  _ god,  _ Lotts, will you just tell him it’s not him I’m mad at? It’s the whole shitty situation and he’s just…” He trails off, unsure of how to finish that sentence.

“I’ll tell him,” Lottie promises. “And Liam too.”

Louis groans. “Was I really in a fucking choir, Lottie?”

Lottie cackles and nods. “Yeah, you were. Mum and I were just as surprised as you are.”

“Christ,” Louis whimpers, burying his head in his hands. “And that worked out well for me.”

“It did,” Lottie agrees. “Though the music thing worked out much better for Liam. He works in London and the States as a music producer.”

“Bloody hell, for real?” Louis asks, interest suddenly piqued. “Wait, does that have something to do with this Z?”

Lottie starts to choke on air. “Wait, who?”

“Z, Zee, I don’t know,” Louis shrugs. “Harry and Liam were talking about him.”

“It’s… you know, he’s…  _ hey,  _ maybe we should get going, it’s probably past visiting hours,” Lottie says, standing up and dusting herself down. “The little ones and all, they’re going to need putting to bed and stuff.” Before Louis knows what’s going on, she leans forward and kisses Louis on the forehead. “Can I let Harry and Liam say goodnight?”

Louis hesitates for a few moments, all mentions of Z forgotten at once, then he nods tightly. “Sure. But only because I wanna try.”

Lottie elbows him. “That’s the spirit.”

Louis sticks out his tongue and pokes Lottie in the stomach, who retaliates by getting him in a weak headlock. It feels so natural, and Louis almost forgets where he is because this is something that clearly hasn’t changed, this scrapping with his sister. But all good things must come to an end, and clearly they were louder than he’d realised, because pretty soon his mum and one of the nurses are poking their heads around the door, both looking as stern as the other.

“You’ve perked up,” Jay observes, stepping into the room properly. Louis lets go of Lottie and grins, nodding.

“Yeah, I guess,” he shrugs. “Were we that loud?”

“Yep,” she nods, but Louis knows the twinkle in her eyes well enough to know she’s only looking stern to humour the nurses. “And I think we’re going to head off soon. The twins are getting a bit restless.”

“Sure,” Louis says, holding his arms above his head so the nurse can fuss around with the machines still clipped to him. “Are you coming back tomorrow?”

“Of course,” Jay says. “With any luck you’ll be going home by the end of the week.”

“Oh my god, thank the  _ lord,  _ I hate it here,” Louis rasps, then his eyes go wide. “No offence,” he tells the nurse.

“None taken,” she says primly. “I agree; physically you’re fine, so you should be able to go home and focus on returning to normal. We all think that’ll do you some good.”

It’s only then that Louis notices Harry shyly poking his head around the door, who then clears his throat. “Uh, Jay?” He moves inside and bows his head. “Ernie fell over – he’s crying and asking for you.”

Jay nods, and reaches across the bed to kiss Louis’s temple. “Love you, baby. I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Yeah, love you,” Louis mumbles, squeezing her hand. “Give the little man a kiss for me, will you?”

“Of course,” she nods, squeezing him back. “Say goodnight to your husband too, there’s a good lad.”

“I…” Louis starts, but she’s already shuffling out of there, patting Harry on the hip as she strolls by. Harry looks more awkward than he’s looked all the time Louis’s known him, and for a split second Louis lets himself wonder which of them asked the other out. He can’t imagine it because the whole concept seems so foreign, so strange, so he stops trying. “Hey.”

“Hi,” Harry murmurs, taking a nervous step towards the bed.

Louis wants him to leave, but Lottie’s voice is loud in his head, and he knows that when his little sister is telling him to pull his head out of his arse, it’s time to pull his head out of his arse.

“I’m sorry,” he rushes out, before he can lose his nerve. “I’m being a dick, aren’t I?”

“No, babe.” Harry shakes his head, and the pet names just keep catching Louis off guard, dammit. “You’re being so Louis about all of this. It’s just…” He sighs, and Louis really doesn’t want him to cry again. “I miss you even though you’re right there, and I’m finding all this very difficult, in case you couldn’t already tell.”

“I get it,” Louis nods. “I don’t want to fight with anyone, least of all my husband.”

Harry lets out a wet chuckle. “Do you know, in seven years of being together and eighteen months of marriage, we’ve only ever fought about two things?”

Interest piqued, Louis bites. “Yeah?”

Harry nods. “You smoking is the main one, and the other is my work taking me away from you for a long time.” He sniffs. “Believe it or not you’re actually kind of clingy.”

“I can believe that,” Louis mumbles, because in all honesty he can. He’s never been in a relationship before, and by the sounds of things Harry is his first and only serious relationship, but he always knew he was the jealous type. Less so when it comes down to material things, but he’s very protective of and clingy towards the people he loves. “So yeah, I just… I want you to know that it’s not… it’s not personal. I’m just very confused right now.”

Harry nods again stiffy. “Thank you, Lou.”

Louis mimics the nod, tight and tired. “I’ll probably see you tomorrow, I guess?”

“You will,” Harry says, firm. “Sweet dreams, darling.”

He hurries out the room before Louis can say anything back, leaving him alone with his thoughts once more. Even though it’s only nine pm he flicks the main light, plunging the little room into comforting blackness, and lies awake for a long time working out if there’s a way he can fix this.

*

“ _ What?” _

“Louis,” his mum says, squeezing his knee. “It’s for the best.”

“No,” Louis says, crossing his arms. He doesn’t even care that Harry is in the room, he isn’t doing this. “Home is home. I wanna go home with you.”

“And live where?” Jay says with a shrug. “We don’t have any spare bedrooms and anyway, the doctors really think that you’ll have a better chance of getting your memories back if you go back to normality.”

“But that isn’t normality,” Louis moans, frustrated. “It’s not my normality. My normality will be when I’m back in Donny with you.”

“Now, Louis, I know this is still all a lot to take in, but we need to think about this rationally,” Dr Fielding says. “Your best chance of remembering yourself is to slot yourself back into your old routines. Muscle memory and familiar surroundings are very good for this.”

“But I…” Louis doesn’t even know how to finish his sentence, he’s that upset. The last thing he wants is to be separated from his mum and siblings, the people he remembers knowing and trusting, to move in with some tall bloke with messy hair who he doesn’t know at all. It makes him feel sick with worry, is what it does, and ultimately, he’s scared. He’s not scared of Harry, because even though everything is weird and all of this is a lot, he does believe that Harry loves him. The man is like an open book with his emotions.

That being said, he’s scared of never getting his memories back, he’s scared of trying to fit into a life that isn’t the one he knows, and he’s scared of fucking it up for himself. Ultimately, he’d rather go home with his mum and wait for his memories to come back themselves than go home with Harry, have them never return, and have to look at his miserable face every single day.

“Baby,” his mum says softly, her nimble fingers running through the back of his hair. “I love you so much, and of course I’d take you back in if I could. But it’s not just feasible for you to live in our house. But I’ll be around and I’ll be down to see both of you boys as often as I can, I promise.”

“You’ll attend cognitive therapy three times a week,” Dr Fielding adds. “And in a few weeks’ time, if you haven’t shown any sign of approval then we can consider more advanced therapy, maybe even hypnosis…”

It’s a lot. It’s too much, and Louis can’t stop himself from hanging his head and bursting into messy, sloppy sobs. His mum pulls him in tight and he cries into her shoulder instantly and he clings to her for what feels like an hour, but thankfully, when he pulls back the doctor is still there, smiling at him kindly. He’s a little surprised to see Harry still there, hands clasped and his bottom lip bleeding from where he’s been nibbling on it, but then he remembers. Harry’s not just some guy who is hanging around for the fun of it. Harry’s his husband.

_ Husband. _

_ Husband. _

_ Husband. _

_ Husband. _

“Sorry,” he mumbles, then, “thanks for just… for giving me a minute.”

“Of course,” the doctor nods, and Harry mutters something incoherent from across the room. “It’s a lot to take in, and you’re allowed to be upset and disorientated. That’s perfectly natural for memory loss patients. Are you okay now, may I continue?”

Louis clears his throat and nods. “Sure.”

“Where was I… ah, yes. Now, we’re in the process of getting some therapy sessions scheduled for you, to try and get some of your memories back. There’s a difference, you see, between your episodic memory – your autobiographical memory, if you will – and your procedural knowledge, which is essentially your muscle memory. For example, Harry tells me you work as a theatre producer, so if you were to return to the stage and a song from one of your shows was played, your body may react in time to the music and you may be able to reproduce the choreography. Am I making sense so far?”

Louis nods again.

“Familiar circumstances are the best circumstances,” Dr Fielding continues. “If you’ve spent the most time in your marital home with Harry over the past few years, then that’s the best place for you. Again, your muscle memory will play a big role here.” He flips over a page on the clipboard in his hands. “Blind people can make their way easily around their own homes because after a time their bodies begin to just know where the walls and the creaky floorboards are, because they’ve walked it so many times,” he explains. “It’s pretty similar here. But obviously, we want to try and dig a little deeper, get all those old memories from the past ten years back, so therapy is going to be pretty important. But aside from that, your physical health is astoundingly good for someone who took a fall like yours.”

“Thanks,” Louis all but whispers, and his mum squeezes him a little tighter around the middle. “So, what now?”

“Now it’s time to go home, son,” Dr Fielding says gently. “With your husband.” Louis feels himself go stiff again, and it must show on his face because Dr Fielding barrels on. “It’s the best thing for you, I promise you. He’s a very nice man, you know.”

Louis glances over at Harry, who cracks a brief smile at the doctor’s words before he goes back to chewing on his lip. He hasn’t said much since this conversation began, and once again Louis is painfully aware that he’s hurt his feelings.

He pushes past the lump in his throat and finally nods. “Sure,” he says at last, hoping that it didn’t sound as strangled out loud as it felt coming out. “Okay. If you think it’s best.”

“We really do,” the doctor nods, offering a smile to him and then to Harry. “I’d like you to come back in to see me in about ten days if you could, just so I can do a follow-up of your physical health, and then we’ll just have you have another MRI, make sure that everything is hunky-dory again.”

“Okay,” Louis says again, not looking at anyone in the room. “Can I, um, can I have some time to myself before I can go home?”

The doctor nods and stands up, sliding the clipboard into its holder at the foot of the bed. “Sure, I think you’ve got a couple of hours before we need you out.” He turns to Jay. “Mum, is he all packed?”

“I packed for him,” Harry answers for Jay, voice gruff. “I, er, yeah, he’s packed.”

Dr Fielding smiles once more. “Good, good. Well, Louis, it’s been a pleasure, even if the circumstances have been less than ideal. See you in ten days?”

Louis nods tersely and then turns away, shuffling up the bed and away from his mum. She stands up and meets his eye briefly.

“You want to be left alone?”

“I do,” he says in a small voice. He feels like a scolded child, even though he hasn’t been told off and deep down he knows that everything they said was reasonable. He pulls the covers up round his shoulders, a bit like a cape. “Come get me in an hour?”

“Sure, baby,” Jay whispers, and Louis can’t work out if she’s just being gentle or whether she was trying to stop her voice from cracking. “Sweet dreams.”

His intention hadn’t been to take a nap, but suddenly nothing sounds more appealing. Even though he was asleep for god knows how long just a few days ago, and has done very little physically since being in hospital, he’s still absolutely shattered. But whenever he tries to shut down his brain, he just…  _ can’t.  _ He’s restless in a way he doesn’t remember ever being while trying to sleep, and no position he tries feels comfortable either. And then sometimes he’ll wake up and he’ll be at a funny angle, limbs contorted like they’re trying to grab something they can’t reach.

He doesn’t understand it.

This time, getting to sleep is easier than it has been, but he wakes up after what feels like minutes when he hears his door click open, then closed. He keeps his eyes closed, assuming it’s just his mum coming to wake him, but then he hears Harry’s voice.

“I got you your coffee, Jay.”

“Bless you, you angel,” Jay murmurs back. They stay silent for a few minutes, and the fact that they’re both just watching him like that makes heat prickle at the back of Louis’s neck uncomfortably.

And then Harry lets out a strangled sob, which takes Louis by surprise enough to almost make him jump, and the guilt that’s been sitting hot and heavy in his stomach since he watched Harry’s face fall the first time he made it clear he’d damaged his brain intensifies.

“What am I going to do, Jay?” he hears Harry weep, a little muffled. It sounds like he’s crying into his hands, maybe his sleeve. “I don’t know how to be in the same space as him and not… I don’t…”

“Shush, darling, shush,” Jay soothes. Louis’s eyes remain closed but he envisions the way she’s running her hand up and down his back like she does to all her children when they’re sad. He hears a mug get set down on a table and the rustling of two bodies pulling themselves together.

“What if he doesn’t…” Harry cuts himself off with a harsh sob, too loud for the tiny hospital room. The conclusion of the sentence goes unspoken, but it isn’t hard to work out what he’s asking.

_ What if he doesn’t ever remember? _

“I don’t know, sweetheart,” says Jay, and it’s the first time he’s heard this much pain in his mother’s voice. “I really don’t know. But I’m banking on him coming back to us. He’s got to come back to us.”

“I can’t lose him,” Harry hiccups, voice small and vulnerable. Louis almost wants to open his eyes and comfort him. “He’s… I know it’s not his fault or my fault but I can’t… the guilt I feel right now is insane and I just…  _ shit,  _ I just need a cuddle from my husband.” Another sob. “And for the first time in seven years my husband doesn’t want to cuddle me and I…”

“Harry, darling, you have nothing to feel guilty about,” Jay says, not loud but certainly firm. “This is the shittiest thing but it is certainly not your fault, do you hear me?” Harry doesn’t reply but Louis assumes he’s nodding. “And look, I know my son. And if he tries to make you feel guilty… well, you just don’t let him. He does that well, the whole guilt tripping thing.”

He hears Harry laugh wetly. “Don’t I know it?” he groans. “Remember the graduation day fiasco?”

“Oh, god, yeah,” Jay says, also letting out a quick laugh. “What a stupid, stupid boy. Jesus, I love him so much.”

“Same,” Harry says forlornly. “Like…  _ god,  _ he’s my forever person and he doesn’t even, like, know my surname. That’s so weird, isn’t it?”

“Give it time,” Jay says gently. “You’re assuming the worst, which is totally natural to do, but… Haz, you’re a priority here too. Physically he’s fine, I know, but at seventeen… bloody hell, he could be a right little brat and let me tell you now, if you need to call me for anything…”

“I will, I promise,” mumbles Harry. “Thank you.”

There’s a few seconds of silence, and then, “I suppose I had better wake the beast.”

Harry laughs again, that gentle, breathy sound that Louis has come to recognise. He quite likes pulling it from Harry’s lips, even if it’s when he and his mum are talking about him behind his back. He forces himself to neutralise his face, then tries to act as akin to a sleepy cat as he can when his mum gently shakes at his shoulder.

He has a feeling that Harry has realised he wasn’t asleep, but his mum seems have bought it and that’s enough for Louis, at least for now. He just hopes his stupid sneaky husband won’t tell on him.

_ Husband. _

_ Husband. _

_ Husband. _

_ Husband. _

*

The house that Harry drives them to is a lot nicer than Louis had been expecting.

He’d pictured it kind of like a student house, with two young blokes who were just starting out in life, but it looks like something straight out a RightMove advert. It’s not quite a picket fence, two-up-two-down like he’d almost been imagining, but there’s a gravel driveway, a sizeable garden that curves around the left side of the property, and the doormat out the front reads,  _ WELCOME! I HOPE YOU BROUGHT BEER! _

“Wow,” Louis breathes, stepping out of the car and crunching down onto the pathway. Harry drives a Nissan Juke, and he’s parked next to a very fancy Toyota that Louis assumes must be his, which,  _ damn.  _ “Is that my car?”

Harry nods as he collects Louis’s bags from the boot. “Yep,” he hums. “Your pride and joy, that.” He pauses. “Had… you learned to drive at seventeen, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, I’m two weeks off taking my test,” Louis begins proudly, then he falters. “Oh. So I passed then.”

Harry snorts. “Yeah, babe. You were the only one up in Glasgow with a car, you loved it. We used to sneak off to the KFC drive thru at midnight and then make out in the back seat.”

Louis keeps a smile plastered on his face, but he has a feeling they both know it’s false. “Really?” he says, bright but clearly fake. “I see.”

Harry ducks past and sets the bags down by the front door, then digs in his pockets for the keys. “You’re about to get assaulted by Fluffy,” he warns with a brief smile. “He’ll have missed you a lot, you know.”

Louis isn’t too concerned – there are worse things to come home to than an adorable fluffy puppy that wants to lick Louis’s face.

_ Like a husband you can’t remember _ , he doesn’t say.

“That’s cool,” he says, going for nonchalant and shoving his hands in the pockets of his trackies. “I can’t wait to meet him, to be fair.”

“He jumps,” Harry tells him, then nudges the door open with his shoulder. Within seconds Louis hears scampering over the hardwood floors, and then a fluffy dog emerges around the corner, barking loudly the second he sees Louis.

“Hey, boy,” Louis grins, because he loves dogs, he’s always loved dogs, and he’s very excited to have a dog that’s his. “Hey,  _ hey.” _

The puppy jumps up at his thighs and paws at them, and Louis leans down to tickle him under the chin and rub his ears. Then he feels teeth nip at the thin skin of his wrist, and he recoils.

“ _ Ow,  _ Jesus  _ Christ. _ ”

“He greets with his mouth,” Harry explains, slinging Louis’s bag over his shoulder. “He isn’t biting you, I promise, he’s just very excited to have you home. Here, head through into the living room and I’ll just take this upstairs for you.” He turns, but then he turns back to Louis and Fluffy a second later. “He likes it best when you tuck him under your arm and stroke him on the belly.”

“Like in the photo?” Louis asks, thinking back.

Harry clearly wasn’t expecting him to remember, but the surprise only flickers across his face for a second before he fixes it into something more neutral and polite. “Yeah, like in the photo.” He disappears up the stairs without another word.

Sighing, Louis trots through into the living room and flops onto the sofa, and Fluffy barely gives him a moment to get comfy before he jumps up and nuzzles under Louis’s arm, then flops his weight down on him and exhales, clearly pleased that his master is home.

“Hello, boy,” Louis mumbles, and resumes scratching at his ears. Then he remembers Harry’s words from the hallway, and he moves his hand down the puppy slowly, then starts stroking over his tummy. Fluffy’s legs flops open in a rather undignified manner, but it’s clear that this is what he wanted all along. He licks at Louis’s shirt and nuzzles in further, and Louis gives himself an imaginary pat on the back for picking such a great dog.

He practically dozes off then and there – another pat on the back for picking out the world’s comfiest sofa – but soon enough Harry comes back down the stairs and pops his head around the door, grinning.

“You’ve bonded, I see.”

“Yeah,” Louis nods, then yawns. “Jesus, this is such a good sofa, I love it.”

“That’s your space on the sofa, you know,” Harry tells him as he comes into the room, perching on the edge of the armchair opposite Louis. “You’re kind of like Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory when it comes to your spot.

Louis raises his eyebrows, and Harry’s eyes go wide and he curses under his breath.

“That’s… you won’t know what that means, I’m sorry.”

“S’fine,” Louis shrugs. “You’ll have to explain it sometime.”

They’re quiet for a few minutes after that.

“I… I unpacked you in the guest room,” Harry says eventually, wincing as he speaks. Louis’s eyes go wide. “I just… I thought that would be easier for you, you know, because we share a bed and that’s… I thought you’d want space and we could work up to that, maybe… or not.”

“Ah,” Louis says blandly. “Yeah, that’s… that makes sense, I guess. Thank you, Harry.”

Harry nods tersely and doesn’t say anything else on the matter. “Are you hungry?”

Louis shrugs. “A little.”

“I’m afraid we don’t have much in,” Harry scowls, like he’s annoyed at himself. “I haven’t had a chance to go to Sainsbury’s this week.”

“That’s okay,” Louis says. “We could order in? And go to Sainsbury’s tomorrow?”

“Sure.” Harry disappears into the kitchen, remerging a few moments later with a handful of menus. “Um. This is your favourite Chinese takeaway, if that’s… if you fancy.” He smiles and looks down. “They know our order, our number, everything, that’s how much we order from there.”

Louis shrugs again and wonders what his order is, and if it’ll make things weird if he asks for something that isn’t his order. “I was thinking maybe pizza,” he croaks out, “if that’s okay with you.”

“Yeah, course it is,” Harry says. He doesn’t do a great job in disguising the way his face falls. “I’ll just… are you still about getting a pizza with as much meat on it as possible, even at seventeen?”

Louis laughs quietly. “Yeah. Wow, I am a creature of habit.”

“Yeah, you are.” Harry mumbles the words quietly, then moves out to the kitchen again, coming back with a pizza menu. “We don’t normally eat pizza, if I’m being honest, but we’ve got this menu. Have a look through and I’ll call it in.”

“What are you having?”

“Probably tuna and sweetcorn,” Harry says, already retreating to the kitchen. “Do you want a drink?”

“Can I have a Coke, please?”

The can is in his hand quicker than Louis can get the question out. “Sorry,” Harry mumbles again. Clearly their deal on limiting their apologies to one another has already gone out the window. “I just… we’ve got loads of Coke out the back. The door on the other side to the kitchen leads to the garage. Help yourself, please.”

“Sure,” Louis nods, cracking it open and drinking it quickly. The bubbles burn his mouth in the best way, and he’s pleased that Coke still takes the same ten years on. “Thanks.”

The rest of the night is quiet – the pizza comes an hour after Harry orders it, and he puts a boxset of The Big Bang Theory on the telly. “It’s always on repeat, so you’re always watching it,” Harry explains through a mouthful of pizza. “You think it’s hilarious.”

It isn’t the funniest show Louis has ever watched, but he finds himself chortling along to a gag every few minutes. It doesn’t take him long to work out what a Bazinga is either, which explains his pyjama bottoms. He tells Harry this and they share a brief laugh, but for now that’s all it is – brief.

And that theme continues for the rest of the evening, until Harry can barely keep his eyes open and Louis ends up shaking him awake after he falls asleep in the armchair.

Harry smiles gratefully and takes the pizza boxes out to the back, then heads upstairs with Louis trailing awkwardly behind. They end up loitering awkwardly in the hallway, Harry clearly unsure of how to handle this and Louis… well, Louis simply doesn’t know which room is the guest room.

“Um, bathroom’s here,” Harry says tiredly. “Your bedroom is that one. That one is my office… not that it matters.”

“Thanks,” Louis says, pressing his lips together. More long silence. “Um. Do you want to use the bathroom first, or can I?”

“I… well, there’s an ensuite bathroom attached to our master bedroom, so we don’t…” Harry starts, then stops, slumping his shoulders. “Sorry, again. Okay, goodnight.”

He rushes into his room and slams the door with more force than necessary, and Louis stands there for a few seconds, feeling like utter shit, before he trudges into the bathroom and turns on the shower.

There’s a fucking monogrammed towel hanging on the back of the door, and there’s heated floors and brand new bottles of everything lining the shelves and cabinets. Clearly Louis  _ is  _ the biggest creature of habit, because the Head & Shoulders shampoo he uses is (aside from a bit of repackaging) the fucking same as he used at seventeen, and so is the bar of Dove soap for his sensitive skin.

He tries to remain bitter and not feel so flattered about all this as he climbs in the shower, turning the water up high in a bid to try and wash that exchange off him.

It doesn’t work, and he climbs into bed feeling younger than ever, wishing he was with his mum and not in some strange bed in some strange house with some strange man who he’s supposed to love but who he doesn’t know from Adam.

He hopes the walls aren’t thin enough for Harry to hear him cry himself to sleep.

*

The first two months of his time back home are  _ long. _

Louis’s been signed off work for nine months so he’s got nowhere to be but at home, and he wouldn’t mind it so much if he was alone or with the dog. But Harry, who works freelance, has cancelled all his clients for the foreseeable future. Louis gets why he has, and there’s a part of him that feels lucky that he has a partner able to do that, but he also feels a little stifled and a lot watched over.

Harry dotes on him, from the moment he wakes up until the moment they go to bed at night. Louis barely has to lift a finger, and at the beginning it’s great. He has snacks on tap, he’s always warm and there’s always water in the kettle in case he wants to make a cup of tea. His laundry is always done, his bedsheets are changed like clockwork every Monday, and he’s got free reign to watch whatever channel or play whatever video game he wants.

But after a while it gets a bit much.

He doesn’t realise how long it’s been since he’s been outside until one day he looks out the window and sees it pouring with rain, and he thinks back to how long it’s been before he’s even seen rain. Which gets him thinking again. If he were to leave the house and go for a walk, would he even know the area? Would his feet manage to walk him to a supermarket, to his work, to his friends’ houses? Has he ever been here before? How close is he to his mum’s house?

His mum is always the one to visit him, or Lottie and her boyfriend Tommy, on their own. Apparently, they don’t want to overwhelm him, no matter how many times he begs them to bring the kids. He craves a loud house, because that’s what’s the most familiar to him.

He’s  _ bored. _

Unfortunately for him, soon after he convinces his mum and Lottie to start bringing the kids, the school holidays end and Lottie goes back to uni, and then suddenly his mum is back at work and he doesn’t see them at all, or hardly ever. It’s upsetting because they were his crutch for a bit, and even though he still manages to ring or FaceTime (he’s decided that he bloody loves FaceTime) one or both every day, the lack of their physical presence is a real ache for a bit.

His therapy sessions start and he’s given a psychologist to talk to twice a week, a rather mumsy-looking lady named Dr Brooke who is surprisingly very easy to talk to. She’s unexpectedly supportive of Louis’s whining, seems to be on his side most of the time, and is keen to suggest ways the pair of them could work it out. But even with these therapy sessions three times a week Louis still feels like he’s at a dead end, because the thing is, he doesn’t know  _ how  _ to  _ talk  _ to Harry.

He knows how to shout at him, but talking? No.

He and Harry have a turbulent relationship at the start; they fight like cat and dog for the first couple of weeks whenever they’re speaking. Part of Louis wants to know just how far he can push Harry, but Harry’s always there and he always lets Louis win. Even when Louis breaks a glass in front of him by throwing it halfway across the kitchen and then staunchly claiming he dropped it, Harry tiredly agrees and then goes into the garage to get the dustpan and brush.

He doesn’t get it.

Quickly the constant fights get exhausting, so he forces himself to stop finding faults in everything Harry does and to try and be nice. As Dr Brooke explains every single session, Harry is relearning his entire behaviour pattern just like Louis is, so the fights will help nothing and he deserves for Louis to cut him some slack.

They just kind of exist around each other from then on, two strangers living in the same house, living the same lives but not by choice. It almost feels like an episode of Big Brother, but when he tells his mum this on the phone she snaps at him to stop being such a dramatic idiot and to just bloody talk to him,  _ for Christ’s sake Louis William _ .

They have more conversations than they did before, that’s for sure. Louis isn’t sure he’d call them friends, let alone life partners, at this point, because it’s still awkward and tense. But they’ve got to take it one day at a time, as his mother keeps telling him. These kinds of things aren’t fixed overnight.

Louis wishes it would fix itself a little quicker, though.

One of the best things that happens is meeting Niall.

Louis  _ loves  _ Niall. Niall is the happiest, most laidback, fun-loving guy Louis has ever met, and the fact that he seems to love Louis just as much is so exciting to him. Apparently, him and Niall met at the pub a few weeks after him and Harry moved to the area, and they’ve been fast friends ever since Louis accidentally spilled a huge glass of wine down the back of him. Niall had roared with laughter and then bought Louis a shot of tequila to show there were no hard feelings.

They seem to do lots of things as a group of four – him, Harry, Liam and Niall. Louis still isn’t sure about Liam, because if anything Liam is treading on more eggshells than Harry, and he’s already tired of it. They both laugh a little too hard at Louis’s jokes, and they’re both quick to jump up and fetch him another can of Coke or cuppa if he so much as licks his lips. He gets it a little more from Harry than he does from Liam, but when he’d broached the subject with Harry he’d jumped to Liam’s defence and said that they’re both only doing what they would have done for Louis in the past.

Louis doesn’t believe him for a second.

He’s just started to accept that he’s twenty-seven years old, and when you’re that age you don’t need to be coddled by your (younger) husband and best mate. It’s exhausting.

So, the best thing about Niall, in Louis’s opinion, is that his laidback nature extends to a wonderful general scattiness, and most of the time Louis thinks  _ he _ forgets that Louis’s forgotten so much of his life. At first he thought he was taking it in his stride, but after time he concluded that Niall just… forgets.

The first time he meets Niall again, he’s greeted with a punch on the arm and called a sucker because Donny Rovers had lost at the football  _ spectacularly _ the night before. Harry had hissed some half-arsed instruction at him to shut the fuck up, but Louis had found himself roaring with laughter and warming to him straight away. Niall works at a publishing house, is a big fan of Derby County of all fucking football teams, and he’s also the biggest drinker Louis has ever known. He puts away pints faster than Louis puts away cups of tea, and that’s saying something.

From then on, he spends a lot more time with Niall and starts to leave the house, which is a huge boost to his mood and his self-confidence. He listens to Niall talk for hours on end about the old times, hears countless stories that sound utterly hilarious and brilliant and nothing like what seventeen-year-old him would ever do. Apparently, he’d tried out for X Factor of all bloody things, but he hadn’t managed to pass the first round, and he’d also, to his great surprise, run the London Marathon two years back for a charity he hasn’t heard of.

“This bloody charity means the world to ya,” Niall laughs fondly. “There’s this little girl, right, and she’s called Eden and she’s got this rare disease called… oh, god, don’t make me pronounce it, I’ll bugger it up. But yeah, it’s basically this horrible disease that affects the brain, and you met Eden at Sheffield Hospital when you went to visit your mum after she had the twins. Dunno how but you did and it… it bloody changed you, bro. You visit this girl all the time and you raised so much money for her, you should be well proud of yourself.”

“Wow,” is all Louis can say, and yeah, he doesn’t know a lot about this but he knows he must care a bloody lot if he can the London Marathon for it. “I’ll have to google it when I get in.”

“Definitely do,” Niall nods, and swipes a piece of prawn toast from Louis’s plate. They’re at Niall’s flat where he lives alone, and there are hundreds upon hundreds of random photos tacked up to the walls, no frames or anything, just memories. It’s another thing Louis loves about Niall. “You keep saying you might do it again.”

“I’d love to remember doing it,” Louis whispers, half to Niall and half to himself. “Maybe I should apply again and start training. It’ll give me something to do.”

Niall nods enthusiastically, which is quite the sight as he’s also trying to simultaneously fill his open mouth with noodles. “It’ll be good for you,” he encourages. “You used to be well into your fitness, you know. You loved your footie the most.”

“I loved footie even back then,” Louis tells him. “Had a job at the Keepmoat Stadium for a bit.”

Niall lets out such a cackle that Louis almost inhales an entire chicken ball in surprise. “Yeah, we know,” he howls. “You used to bring it up all the bloody time.”

Louis balks. “Why on earth would I do that? It was bloody years ago, clearly.”

“No idea,” Niall admits, still chuckling. “But it’s still funny. Became a bit of a joke between us after a while, how much you used to bring it up.”

Louis thinks back as far as he can – he was bloody proud of himself for landing that job. He moved from shop to shop, restaurant to restaurant back in the day, but he was never any good at half of his roles. He wasn’t great at being on time and he always got distracted or ran into someone he knew, and he got let off more jobs than he can remember. But his job at the stadium felt like such a big deal. He loves footie, always has, and it was bloody good money. He could buy his mum and sisters presents and help with the weekly shops, and that had just felt brilliant.

He mentions it in the car later when Harry comes to pick him up. He’d been shooting the evening wedding of an old schoolmate in Derbyshire so it’d been just Louis and Niall for the evening, and he sent Louis a quick text asking if he wanted a lift home. Niall’s had a few beers anyway, so he accepts, but when Niall asks if Harry wants to come in for a coffee or some food he politely declines.

“Sorry, Ni, normally I would but I’m beat,” Harry tells him, then yawns to punctuate his point. Louis rubs his arm sympathetically because he really does look shattered, bless him. It coaxes a smile out of him though. “You know them days where nothing goes right? Well, today was one of them. I’m almost scared to look at the footage we captured, to be honest.”

“I’m sure it’s great,” Louis says as he shrugs his jacket on. “Here, let’s get going. I can drive if you want.”

“Would you mind?” Harry says after another yawn. “Have you had a drink?”

“Just one beer a couple of hours ago, I’ll be fine,” Louis says. He turns to hug Niall goodnight, grinning into his old friend’s shoulder. “Thanks for tonight, Nialler.”

“Anytime, bro,” Niall grins, then folds Harry into a tight hug. “C’mere, Hazza boy, you didn’t think you were getting away without one.”

Even though he looks ready to fall asleep standing up, Harry laughs and hugs back. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Miss you,” Niall hums as he pulls away. “You gotta start coming around here with your boy more, I feel like I don’t see you no more.”

Harry’s too tired to mask his wince, and Louis looks between both of them and feels inexplicably guilty for a second. “S’my bad,” Harry mumbles before Louis can interject. “Thought Lou could do with getting to know you all without my input.”

Niall shoots him a look. “We still want you around, Haz. Don’t let yourself be a stranger, now.”

“Next time,” Harry promises, rubbing at his eyes. Louis wants to get him home and to bed right now, and he almost finds himself winding an arm around Harry’s waist to support him because he’s not sure if Harry’s going to make it down the stairs and to the car without stumbling.

_ Wait, what? _

He refrains, but he takes the car keys from Harry and leads the way with a fleeting wave behind him to Niall. Once they’re in the car he leans forward so he can slide the key in, fumbling a little as he’s only done this a couple of times now, when he hears a hearty  _ thunk. _

“Harry?”

“Nnnngghh,” is Harry’s dignified response. He’s got his eyes closed, head against the window, and Louis reverses the car with a laugh. “Oh, leave me be. I’m knackered.”

“I can tell,” Louis says dryly. “What about today was so long?”

“Everything,” Harry groans, then buries his face in his hands. “My camera battery died even though I  _ know  _ I put it on charge last night, so I had to wait for it to charge at the back of the bloody church because I’m a twat who left their spare one at home. Then the bride had a hissy fit because her mum had a hip flask in her bag and it was just… it was hell from start to finish. Plus, I’m rusty, you know? I haven’t taken photos like that in a couple of months, so.”

Louis nods and focuses on the unfamiliar roads, then clears his throat. “Maybe you should think about going back then?”

He doesn’t turn to look at him but he can just imagine the way Harry’s blinking at him. “Really?”

Louis nods again. “I’m not a kid who needs you home all the time, no matter how many times you insist upon it.” He flashes him a quick glance as they pull up at some lights; Harry’s frowning. “What?”

“I don’t think you need a babysitter,” Harry says slowly, carefully. “I just… my husband was injured, so I’m taking some time off while he recuperates.”

“This isn’t the same as me breaking my leg though,” Louis says, but really the last thing he wants is an argument. Harry’s too tired and it’s not something he’s in the mood to delve into now. “Whatever, it’s your choice anyway.”

“Louis…”

“Let’s not argue, please?”

Harry sighs. “Sure, let’s… yeah, let’s not. How was your Chinese?”

“It was good,” Louis says. “I, um, Niall told me a lot of stuff. Said I should ask you about it?”

“Oh, yeah?”

“He said I ran the London Marathon.” He can’t help but feel incredibly proud as he says the words aloud, even if he can’t remember it. “For a charity that I love?”

Harry laughs quietly. “The Eden Dora Trust, yeah. Yeah, you did. Two years ago, that was.”

“Are their pictures? I’d love to see.”

“Yeah, we’ve got a whole album full,” Harry tells him. “I’ll show you when we get in.”

“No, you go to bed, we can look in the morning.”

“No,” Harry croaks, then yawns again. He isn’t doing a great job of fighting his case. “I know exactly where they are, it won’t take long.” He yawns again. “Bloody hell.”

“Harry,” Louis says sternly, feeling very much like a mum. “Go to bed.” Harry laughs again. “What you laughing for?”

“You just sound so much like my… I mean, old Louis, right now.”

“Oh.”

“In a good way,” Harry assures him, and then, “What else did Niall tell you?”

Now it’s Louis’s turn to laugh. “I, um, did I really try out for X Factor?”

Harry laughs again, much louder this time. “Oh, babe,” he says, and Louis hopes it’s the tiredness talking over him being all patronising about this, “You did. You were so excited.”

Heat prickles at the back of Louis’s neck. “Did you… did you come with me?”

“No, we’d not long parted ways after Glasgow,” Harry says. “It was back when we were texting each other non-stop.”

“I hope for the sake of mankind that no copies of my audition tape still exist.”

“It was played at our wedding actually.”

“What?” Louis shrills, nearly overshooting their house as he slams on the pedals and then stalls the car. “Shit. Fuck.  _ What?” _

“Jesus,” Harry groans, head in his hands. “Please don’t kill us before I’ve had the chance to have a nap.”

“Sorry,” Louis whines, then manages to reverse back down the driveway and park the car with little disaster. “I’m clearly still a bit rusty with my driving.”

Harry snorts and unbuckles his seatbelt. “No harm done,” he says. “Come on, photos then bed.” He stretches up and clicks his back, then opens the back door of the car and starts unloading it.

“Can I carry anything?” Louis asks. Harry nods and shoves a giant cardboard box in his arms before he can argue, and he stumbles towards the door and unlocks it clumsily.

“Just dump it anywhere, I’ll sort it in the morning,” Harry calls. Louis shouts an okay back and deposits it on the dining table, then turns to Fluffy and rubs his cheeks between his cold hands. Harry comes in a minute later, two huge bags slung over each shoulder. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” Louis says. “Shall I put the kettle on?”

“Oh god, please,” Harry moans. “You do that and I’ll grab the album, yeah?”

Louis nods and disappears into the kitchen, fixing himself a cup of Yorkshire and Harry a cup of lemon and ginger, his evening favourite. When he heads back through into the lounge Harry’s curled up on the sofa with Fluffy tucked under his arm, two books balancing on the sofa arm.

“Bless you,” Harry says, accepting the tea gratefully. Louis sits down cross-legged on the floor in front of him and tucks his tea to one side for it to cool. “Here, I scooped up two here. This one is the London Marathon one and the other is of… it’s of our time in Glasgow.” Louis hears him gulp. “Which obviously, you don’t have to look at, but I just thought…”

“Thank you, Harry,” Louis says, nudging his foot with his foot. “I’m excited to look at both.”

Harry grins softly and then stands, and Louis hears his joints pop again. “Here, there’s loads across there if you want to look at any events. There in time order, so, yeah. You okay to turn the big lights off if I head to bed?”

“Yeah, course,” Louis says, mirroring his smile. “Sleep well, Harry.”

“You too, darling,” Harry says, leaving the room before Louis can see his face and tell if the pet name is a slip up or not. That’s two pet names he’s used tonight, and Louis wonders if he uses them as often to Harry as Harry uses them to him.

He scrabbles up and plops onto the sofa, reaching for the London Marathon album. He isn’t sure he’s ready for the Glasgow photos yet. The first pictures in the album are of him with a little girl, presumably this Eden girl, and then later through the album they swap over to ones of him and Harry, Liam, and Lottie and Tommy in London. He’s dressed in red from head to toe, and the shots vary of ones of him posing with his sister and friend to arty ones of him running, the backgrounds blurred out.

He looks so happy in the pictures of him and Eden – there’s loads of him cuddling her on a couch, a couple of them in a meeting of sorts, and then even more of them together at an event, some kind of fundraiser by the looks of it. She’s gorgeous and very smiley, and he spends a good few minutes afterwards googling everything he can about her and her illness.

He vows to contact the family sometime in the next week, too.

The one picture from the whole album that stands out to him, though, is the one at the very end. Harry has Louis’s medal around his neck and Louis’s kissing it while Harry peers down at him looking happier than Louis has ever seen him. Louis’s wrapped in a foil blanket and it’s pissing it down with rain, but even though he can’t recall it at all he knows that that moment he was one of the happiest he’s ever been.

He snaps a quick photo of it on his iPhone. He isn’t sure why he does it, but then he finds himself setting it as his wallpaper, and he doesn’t know  _ why. _

Harry sleeps for fifteen hours that night, and Louis realises the tiredness of last night was pretty much an extension of the exhaustion the bloke’s been feeling for months. He gets up way before him and eats cereal in his pants on the sofa with the dog, but after clicking around all the channels several times he concludes being awake is far too boring and decides to go back to sleep.

He wakes up again early afternoon, in need of a wee and some food and to stretch his legs. He gets up and goes into the bathroom, then is about to head downstairs when he hears Harry talking to someone.

The guest bedroom is right above the door, and usually it opening and closing wakes him up. But he didn’t wake up, so with a little bit of trepidation he tiptoes down the stairs slowly. It doesn’t take him long to work out that Harry’s on the phone to someone.

They’re talking about him, that he works out right away. He wonders who it could be, his mum or Harry’s mum or one of their friends, maybe? Either way, how rude.

So he doesn’t mean to eavesdrop, he really doesn’t, but he hides around the corner and does so anyway.

He can kind of see Harry in the glass of the kitchen window, and he’s holding his phone up in front of him. He’s on FaceTime, not loud speaker, he realises, and he quickly twigs there are in fact two people on the other side.

“I don’t know what to tell you, Haz,” Liam’s tinny voice says. “I wish I could come home again but I can’t, not this week.”

“No, it’s fine, I get it,” Harry says hoarsely. “I just miss you guys. You too, Z. I need to fucking unwind.”

_ Z. _

“Can you not take a break from one another?” a different voice says. This one has a northern twang, not far off Louis’s, and it’s scratchy and a bit rough, like it’s tired or a little ill. “Like, do you need some space? Can he go back to his Mum’s for a bit, maybe?”

“And what kind of a husband would that make me?” Harry squawks, then cuts off and looks around wildly, like he’s scared Louis will hear. Louis presses his back harder against the wall and tries not to breathe. “I’d miss him like crazy anyway. Like, he’s driving me up the wall right now but I don’t want to be apart from him, you know?”

“Yeah, understandable,” the northern voice – Z’s - says sympathetically. “Are you fighting?”

“No,” Harry admits. “We’ve only had two real fights, to be fair, and both were my fault.”

“Haz,” Liam’s voice says gently, “it’s nobody’s fault. You’re both having a seriously shit time. But it’ll be fine, we all know it will.”

“Will it?” Harry says bitterly. “Because we’re just going on and on as if it will be, but what happens if we get six months down the line and nothing has changed? He’ll have to go back to work at some point, lord knows we can’t afford this mortgage on my salary alone, and then what? What if it doesn’t work out between us then? What if he…?”

“Harry, babe, that’s still months down the line,” Z tells him. “And you know if you need any financial help in the meantime I got you.”

“No,” Harry says stubbornly. “It’s fine, we’re fine, I’m just… I can’t help but think about this. I just… it just sucks so much because I had it all and now I have… I have everything I ever wanted, right, but my husband doesn’t love me back, or even know who the fuck I am. What kind of sick universe…”

“Stop letting yourself get so worked up, babe,” Z says, firm. “That won’t solve shit. And Lou’s not stupid, he’ll pick up on it.”

“He probably already has,” says Harry glumly. “Honestly I don’t… I don’t think he hates me but I don’t think he particularly likes me either.”

“Probably because the pair of you are smothering him half to death,” Z says. Louis hears Liam splutter on the other end and Harry makes an indignant sound. “Oh, come on, you two, don’t be thick. You are. And for fuck’s sake, have you ever met Lou? I’ve not even seen him yet and I can already tell what he’s thinking. He’s thinking can they just back off and act a little more like Niall, for crying out loud.”

Louis decides then and there that he really likes Z, whoever he is.

“How the fuck do you know how Niall is acting?” Liam asks, half indignant and half genuinely curious.

There’s a sigh. “What, you think just because the four of you spend more time together that me and Niall don’t text?”

Louis really likes Z.

“No, babe, I didn’t think that but… oh, whatever. Haz, do you think we’re too overbearing?”

“I don’t know, I hadn’t really thought about it,” Harry says, and Louis can already imagine the way he’s chewing on his bottom lip. “I mean… I guess maybe a little, but it’s just, like, the stuff I do anyway. You know I do most of the cooking and the cleaning,”

“Yeah, because he’s working full days and unless you’re away or whatever your work is usually a lot more flexible,” Z explains. “Is he literally sat on the sofa all day eating oven chips?”

“No,” Harry tuts. “I cook for him. I cook whatever he wants.”

“Oven chips?”

“ _ No, _ ” Harry snaps. “Look, I… I just worry about him, okay? I worried about him before and I worry about him now. That’s natural when you’ve got a long-term partner.”

“Aw, babe, do you worry about me?” Z asks Liam coyly, and even though Louis can’t see them he imagines the wet sound he hears is a kiss between them. “Do you worry about me when you leave me here in big ol’ scary LA all by myself?”

“Get off me,” Liam whines, but he’s laughing. There’s more kissing noises and Louis thinks that whoever this guy is, he sounds really good for Liam. “Nah, I dunno. I do worry about Z but I think it’s mainly because if I’m not here he’ll smoke himself ragged and drink nothing but Red Bull.”

“Do you worry about Lou?” Harry asks.

“I worry about you both,” Liam says. “I worry that you’re not coping nearly as well as you’re trying to portray to him, and I worry that he’s not coping with the changes and stuff.”

“Do you… do you think he’d tell me if he wasn’t?”

“I don’t know,” Liam replies. “Do you guys, like, talk?” There’s a pause. “That wasn’t a dig, god no. But I just wonder if maybe what you’re doing is still tiptoeing around each other a couple of months on. And yes, I know I’m guilty of the tiptoeing but… but I’m not married to him, I guess.”

“You guess,” Z snorts. “That’s nice and reassuring, thanks Li.”

“No,” Harry says hoarsely. “No, we don’t talk. We just… we just kind of exist, around one another in the same damn house.”

“Well… I mean, I’m not here to tell you how to live your life or marriage but maybe, like, try talking to him?”

“Urgh, fine,” Harry groans, and Louis has to smile, albeit weakly, at the absurdity of the situation. Harry and he  _ don’t  _ talk, not really, and even though he isn’t always in the mood for it it’s… absurd, is what it is. At the end of the day they are married, and they can’t just go on as they are. They both know that but neither of them have been in the right mind to do anything about it.

And it’s reached this point where Louis is tired of it. At the start it was kind of what he wanted, to be left alone and to have snacks brought to him whenever he wanted and to have his pick of what TV channel to watch, but now… now it’s boring and awkward and it’s not how he wants to live anymore.

Maybe he wants to try.

“Look, I’d better go,” Harry’s saying, which snaps him out his thoughts. “I’ve gotta wake him up in a bit so he can take his meds.”

“Okay, Haz,” Liam says softly. “We both love you, yeah? Stay strong and call either of us if you need anything.”

“Love you,” Z says, and then Louis hears the familiar beep of a FaceTime call disconnecting and he panics. He backs towards the stairs as slowly as he can, trying to avoid the creaky floorboard he knows is there somewhere, and hopes that from he’s hovering precariously on the second to bottom step it looks like he’s just come down the stairs.

For added value he yawns, which is the sight that greets Harry when he heads to the stairs a couple of minutes later. “Oh, you’re up,” he says gingerly, and he looks guilty, like he’s worried Louis might be able to tell he and their two mates just had a super in-depth conversation about him. “I was just coming to wake you.”

“I’m up,” Louis echoes, then rubs at one of his eyes. “M’hungry.”

Harry nods. “Want some pasta?”

“Yeah, would love some,” Louis nods, and then, “thanks, Harry.”

Harry raises his eyebrows but then drops them within seconds, and he smiles. “No worries, Lou. Do you want a Coke?”

“Here, I’ll grab it while you pop the kettle on,” Louis offers. “Do you want one?”

“If there’s a can of Diet left out there then sure.”

Neither of them mention that this is kind of coincidental and convenient timing, but thirty minutes later they’re both in stitches as they try to throw bits of diced carrot up in the air and catch it in their open mouths. Louis clunks his head against the cabinets more than one, and Harry sticks his tongue out so far in a bid to catch it that he looks too hilarious for Louis to stand.

From then on, things seem to get a little easier. Louis forces himself to get more involved in the day to day stuff – he helps with dinner where he can, he hoovers up the dog hairs, he changes his own bedsheets, and he even takes Fluffy on some walks, letting himself get to know the local area a bit better. It feels nice to be out of the house for a change, and this new freedom he’s experiencing he’s really enjoying.

It takes him a while to realise that what he was nervous about was becoming an adult. In his mind, he hasn’t finished his teenage years – he never got to go to university, he never got to experiment in the ways that he’d planned, and he never got the chance to just care about himself for a while. He is aware that  _ technically  _ he did, but the jump feels too big, so he’s been pretending it hasn’t happened. Seventeen-year-old him loved lying on the sofa, eating pop tarts and drinking Coke, playing video games and sneaking the occasional beer.

So why doesn’t he now?

He brings this up in his next therapy session, and Dr Brooke tells him that that’s perfectly natural to feel that way, which there and then feels like a weight off.

“In your mind, you didn’t get those experiences, so it’s perfectly reasonable for you to feel like you’re still teenage,” she explains. “It’ll be interesting to hear your thoughts actually, on whether you do still feel seventeen, because you’ve had a couple of months to adjust.”

“I… don’t know,” Louis admits. “I don’t know how old I feel, to be honest, because I do feel a little bit like I’m just existing.” He sighs. “When I look in the mirror every day, obviously, I see me as a twenty-seven-year-old, which I guess is how I’ve grown into feeling. I guess… I guess I feel like me but without ten years’ worth of memories.”

“It’s also perfectly reasonable to feel like that,” Dr Brooke reassures him. “Ten years is a long time. And it’s natural for your body and your mind to feel a little disconnected from one another thus. But as I believe Dr Fielding explained to you, this distinction between what your body craves and what your mind craves can manifest itself in obvious ways. For example, when we might be feeling too lazy to exercise when in fact we always feel better about ourselves once we’ve had a workout. And you may think what you enjoy is lying on your sofa playing your X-Box, when really that isn’t who you are anymore.”

Louis nods. “So how do I learn what I do enjoy?”

Dr Brooke raises her eyebrows. “Have you not asked Harry?” Louis shakes his head. “Okay, well, let’s think about this for a second. You work in a theatre, you said, so clearly you must enjoy plays and musicals and such.” She shrugs. “Why don’t you go and see some?”

“Okay,” Louis agrees. “I’ll mention it to Harry when I get home.”

“And how are the two of you?” Dr Brooke probes. “Getting along better?”

“I… think so,” Louis says tentatively, and she raises her eyebrows again. “I can’t really explain it. I really like the guy, but we… oh, bloody hell, it’s just so awkward.”

“Awkward?”

“Well, it’s less so now, but when I first got back he… he was really overbearing and it was quite a lot of effort to be around him because I wanted to just scream at him to back off. But now… I think we’ve come to some compromises.”

“That sounds promising,” Dr Brooke says, nodding. “I think you probably both know what you’ve got to do, but it’s putting it into practice that’s the issue. It isn’t easy to lose your husband while he’s right in front of you at the same time, just like it’s not easy to lose ten years’ worth of memories.”

“I guess,” Louis says with a shrug. “I’m trying to keep that more and more in mind because… well, I know I was being a little difficult in acting like I’m the most hard done by here.”

“You can’t compare your situations,” Dr Brooke tells him sternly. “You’re both having a tough time, but you’ve got to be supportive and helpful towards one another, because that’ll be the easiest way for the both of you to get through it.”

Louis nods, chewing on his thumbnail, and tells himself sternly that that’s what he’s going to do.

One thing to be said for Louis Tomlinson is that once he sets his mind to something, he damn well sees it through, and that’s exactly how this pans out. He knows he’s been a shit, he knows he’s been lazy and exasperating and angry at times, so he vies to change that.

And things do seem to get easier from then on.

The first thing he decides to do is make up with Liam.

Louis invites him round for dinner and he even tries to cook, but he ends up setting the fire alarm off one too many times and Harry takes over, swatting him away and telling him to just get the beers out the back fridge. Liam arrives just a few minutes later and there’s an awkward few minutes where Harry’s finishing up the cooking and it’s just the pair of them in the lounge, the only sound them sipping at their beers.

“Louis, can I say something?” Liam stammers eventually, and Louis finds himself nodding. Anything to move them out of this awkward silence,  _ honestly.  _ “I’m so sorry because I… I know you probably have some reservations about me, you know, because you can’t remember me being your best friend and I’m away so much and all that, but I promise you that I still love you even if you don’t love me, and I’m so happy you invited me here because even if we don’t talk the way we used to or it turns out you don’t like me the same, that’s  _ fine,  _ I’m just grateful to have you back in my life even a little bit, and…”

“You talk a lot, don’t you?” Louis interjects before he can stop himself. Liam stops speaking mid-sentence and gapes at him, and then they both find themselves laughing. Louis shakes his head and just laughs, because isn’t he the one who invited Liam here in the first place? And this is his  _ best friend _ and he’s apologising for something he can’t help and being so damn sincere that Louis doesn’t really know what to do with it.

“Sorry,” Liam says after he’s stopped laughing, his skin hot and red. “I just…”

“Can we start again?” Louis suggests, and then, “tell me about that choir, maybe?”

Liam laughs again – this whole thing just feels so absurd – and launches into a story about it being a  _ cool choir, honestly.  _ By the time Harry walks in with plates of steaming curry the pair are huddled on one sofa, with Liam flicking through old Facebook photo albums and talking through the various antics they got up to at university.

It feels like no time at all before it’s midnight and Liam’s yawning and dialling a cab, and Louis finds himself excited to get to know Liam better, which seems almost ridiculous as two weeks ago he wanted to avoid him at all costs.

It’s a start.

And then there’s Harry.

He shouldn’t be so surprised that him and Harry get on as well as they do, he thinks, because they’re  _ married,  _ for pity’s sake. Yet it does almost take him by surprise just  _ how  _ well they get on, because when they’re getting on they  _ really _ get on.

It turns out that Harry, when he’s not being frantic or overbearing as hell, is really fucking funny. He has a million and one jokes in his head always, and he’s always cracking puns and dropping one-liners that have Louis choking on his drink or snorting the most unattractive giggles in public. He’s dry and sarcastic and rude at all the wrong times and Louis finds himself laughing more with him than he did even with Niall.

He’s also incredibly endearing and everything he does he puts his whole heart and soul into, something that Louis has to admire. His portfolio for work and the photos that Louis has seen in his albums and dotted around the house are all gorgeous, and he finds it just amazing that Harry is mostly self-taught. He’s loyal and family-focused too – he calls his sister every single day around the same time Louis calls home, and even though he hasn’t met her yet he’s almost scared to. He can only imagine what stories Harry’s told her about him recently.

The thing that shocks him the most is how clear it is that Harry wholeheartedly, unequivocally loves him.  _ Obviously _ they’re married, but Harry really would (and does) do anything for Louis, whether that be something small like turning the heating up if Louis reaches for a blanket, or something big like Louis saying he misses going to football matches and then having a season pass in his wallet the next day.

His first football match with Harry is brilliant. It’s only a small match – Donny Rovers vs Newport County – but they both wrap up warm and make the drive, and Harry packs them a picnic and wears the shirt even though he’s a Man U supporter, and they laugh a lot at how shit the team is and then laugh even more when Harry tips half a travel mug of Heinz tomato soup down his front. It’s just  _ fun,  _ effortless and relaxed _.  _ How it should always have been.

Louis appreciates the little things a lot more now. Yes, he used to find it irritating, but he now sees it more for what it is – a husband who loves him, who is trying to show that love in slightly different, more subtle ways than he could before. A husband who is trying to communicate these feelings in a way that doesn’t freak Louis out. A husband who is lost, but is trying to be found, one way or another.

The night he realises he fancies Harry, it doesn’t even shock him given how the last few weeks have gone. He’s had a few beers and so has Harry, and they’ve been out to the cinema and then to the pub, and Harry’s been doing a lopsided, completely awful impression of the lead character that has him practically falling off his bar stool. They grab a kebab each and get a cab home, and they eat their treats on the sofa, tossing the occasion piece to Fluffy, then make their way upstairs.

“Goodnight, Louis,” Harry says softly, then in a move that appears to surprise him just as much as it surprises Louis, he darts forward and presses a soft but firm kiss to Louis’s cheek.

Louis feels himself go pink, but before he can say anything Harry’s darted into his –  _ their –  _ bedroom and slammed the door closed. He hesitates for a moment, fingers coming up to brush the spot that Harry just kissed, and he smiles serenely to himself, giddy in a way he doesn’t recognise.

He kind of imagines this is what being dropped off home after a first date feels like.

(He briefly wonders how many first dates he went on before Harry, then realises that it doesn’t matter because clearly, they weren’t significant. And bizarrely, he’s okay with that. So maybe he realises he cares about Harry a bit, so what? They are married, after all.)

That night, he falls asleep wondering what it would be like to kiss Harry, and when he wakes up he realises he doesn’t even feel guilty about it.

_ Bugger. _

*

It’s not even something he really thinks about. Harry’s at Sainsbury’s, he’s bored out of his mind, so of course he goes snooping.

He’s only actually been in his and Harry’s shared bedroom once since he came back home, and that was to try and locate a towel. The door remains fervently closed when they’re home together, even after all this time, and Louis doesn’t really get why. So, he tiptoes up the stairs of the empty house and carefully opens it.

It’s immaculate, which shocks Louis a little. His room as a kid looked like a hurricane had hit it, and their guest room now isn’t much better. But it really is immaculate; the bed is made, the sheets tucked under with precision and there are lots of decorative pillows. Louis’s heart lurches a little at the sight of two pillows in particular – they’re cream, with gold letters H and L in a calligraphy print on them, positioned perfectly central.

_ Harry sleeps on the left side of the bed then. _

“Jesus,” Louis mutters, pushing the door open wide and stepping all the way in. The carpet is cream, soft under his bare feet, and he moves through the room and over to what he’s deduced is his side of the bed. There’s a bedside table with a lamp, alarm clock, and a pair of glasses resting on it, but what he’s most interested in is snooping through his own bedside drawers.

The first thing he comes across is his wedding ring, which knocks him for six straight away. It matches the platinum band he’s seen and studied on Harry’s finger more times than he can count, so he plucks it up and studies it up close. It’s very simplistic and minimal, much like the bedroom and a lot of the house, and Louis has to wonder how much of this is actually his décor. He brings the ring to eye height and smooths his thumb over it. It’s cold and firm, and before he can second-guess himself he slides it onto his finger.

It sits there and he stares at it for a good few moments. It feels comfortable, a perfect fit, and familiar, almost; the skin underneath has always been paler than the rest of his hand, its imprint firm, but this is… this is a lot to register.

He doesn’t take it off, instead choosing to rummage further in the drawers. Next, he finds a bottle of lube and a handful of condoms which…

_ Fuck. _

That answers another of his million questions, and one of the ones he really doesn’t want to ask to boot. Seventeen-year-old Louis had only just accepted that he was gay, which was a big step but then there’s always been this… this  _ feeling,  _ lurking at the back of Louis’s brain that he might not be normal.

Like, what kind of seventeen-year-old boy who has recently come to terms with their sexuality doesn’t want to experiment and is completely ambivalent to porn, right?

“Fuck,” he mumbles aloud, then pushes the condoms aside to reach to the stuff underneath. Out of sight, out of mind. The next thing he comes across is his passport, which,  _ boring,  _ but then next to that is a card. It’s the ugliest, lamest, cheesiest card Louis thinks he’s ever seen – there are two bears holding hands, in their other hands heart-shaped balloons. The slogan at the top reads  _ I LOVE YOU BEARY MUCH,  _ and Louis has to snort at the ludicrousness of it.

He opens it slowly, tentatively, and his breath hitches when he reads the message inside.

 

_ My dearest Louis,  _ it reads.

_ “When love speaks, the voice of all the gods makes heaven drowsy with the harmony.” _

_ You murmured that quote against my lips the night we said we loved each other, and it’ll forever be my favourite, just like you. _

_ All my love for the rest of our lives baby, _

_ Your H xxx _

 

The lump in his throat is significantly larger now. He reads the card two, three, four more times before he sighs and returns it to the drawer, haphazard and trembling. He hadn’t been expecting that, not even close, and the fact that he saved his makes him even more curious. Has Harry saved the one he assumes he wrote to him?

He moves over to Harry’s bedside table and opens the drawer. This one is a lot more meticulously organised, but the card is there, tucked underneath his passport and some Polaroids. First things first he pulls out the photos and flicks through them; there’s one of Harry perched on Gemma’s lap, there’s one of Harry wearing his hair in bunches while Daisy and Phoebe pose in front of him, and there’s one of the pair of them in an unfamiliar garden somewhere, simultaneously shoving hot dogs unattractively into their mouths. There’s a fourth one where Harry looks rather drunk, with his eyes closed, a cocktail umbrella tucked behind his ear, and his elbows resting on the table, hands tucked his chin. The fifth one is another of the pair of them, a candid this time, on the sofa in their house, watching TV. Harry has his back to Louis’s chest, Louis has a hand in Harry’s hair, and it looks rather domestic. And the final one is simply of Louis, and he’s asleep in this room, this bed, and it looks like he’s smiling.

It’s all just a lot. Everything is a lot to take in, and Louis carefully stacks the photos back together and returns them to the drawer, then reaches for the card that he’d popped on the bed.

It’s undoubtedly from him, because his loopy scrawl is the same as he remembers.

 

_ Oh, my lovely Harry, _

_ The year I’ve spent married to you has without a doubt been the best of my life, and it makes me so happy to know that it’s only the beginning. My love for you grows each and every day, and I thank my lucky, lucky stars I found someone as beautiful, as caring, as funny and as brilliant as you are, my darling. You make my world a better place and I have loved every single second of our married life together (yes, even those two days where we didn’t really speak because I forgot your mum’s birthday – sorry again!) And perhaps I’m not as poetic as you, but I know you know. I know you know. _

_ Let’s just keep on keeping on, baby. I love you forever. _

_ Yours, L xx _

_ P.S. if you ever show anyone this card I’ll be forced to deny all knowledge/claim I was pissed when I wrote this message, got it? LOVE YOU _

 

“Fuck,” Louis whispers again, his quivering hand coming up to cover his mouth as he reads the card again, and again, and again.

He really loves Harry, doesn’t he?

And even though he’s never been in love (that he remembers), the feeling that’s currently swelling in his chest when he thinks about him must come close.

“ _ Fuck. _ ”

“Lou? Louis?”

The sound of the front door slamming closed reverberates upstairs, and Louis drops the card.

“ _ Shit.” _

He shoves it back into the drawer haphazardly, then hurries back over to his own side, clumsily trying to sort the pile of his own crap on the floor back into it.

“Louis?”

“Coming,” Louis yells, and shoves the drawer closed, then moves as quickly and quietly as possible out of there and back to the guest room. He hears the now-familiar clip-clop of Harry’s feet up the stairs, so he emerges, pasting on a bright smile. “Hiya.”

“Hi,” Harry says, cheeks pink from the October cold. “Whatcha been up to?”

“Not much,” Louis lies. “I’ve been reading and stuff. How was Sainsbury’s?”

“Fine,” Harry says, then tilts his head towards the stairs. “I bought some of your faves, so if you wanna come downstairs I’ll make you some lunch?”

“I’d like that, yeah,” Louis nods, awkwardly balancing his weight from foot to foot. “Now?”

“Yeah, if you’re hungry.”

“I could eat,” Louis says, following Harry down the stairs and through into the kitchen. Orange carrier bags litter the floor, and on the countertop Louis spots a rotisserie chicken in a bag. Harry’s not wrong – he loves fresh hot chicken, and when Harry pulls a giant baguette out of one of the other bags he can’t help but think,  _ yeah, you picked a good one there, Louis. _

“We always do this,” Harry’s voice says from behind him, interrupting his thoughts. “Every weekend – whatever day we end up doing the Sainsbury’s shop – we get a big baguette and a hot chicken and once we’d put the shopping away we’d stick a film on and get stuck in to these giant sandwiches.”

Louis grins. “I’m guessing it was my idea?”

Harry snorts. “Obviously. You always make fun of me because I like to put salad in mine, then you steal all the chicken skin.”

“Sounds like me,” Louis has to laugh, then moves forward to have a rummage in one of the other bags. “What else did you get?”

He doesn’t get a response, so he asks again.

“Harry?”

“Louis, are you… are you wearing your wedding ring?”

Caught completely off guard, Louis goes cold.

“I…” He flounders for an excuse, but realistically he can’t make an excuse for this, so he stops trying. “Yeah. Yes, I am.”

Harry doesn’t look at him when he asks, “Did you go in our room?”

Louis hangs his head. “Yes, I did, but…” He groans. “I’m sorry.”

Harry looks hurt, and his eyes drop closed. He grips the counter so hard that his knuckles go white, and Louis inexplicably feels like crying. “I… you don’t have to be sorry,” he breathes out, after a horrible thirty seconds of silence. “It just… it took me by surprise, I guess.”

“I’m sorry,” Louis says again, toying with the ring a little. He kind of wants to take it off, but he also doesn’t, and he doesn’t know  _ why.  _ “I just… I figured that it’s my stuff too? I don’t know.”

“It  _ is  _ your stuff too,” Harry says, and there’s an almost pleading note to his voice. “Louis, I… the last thing I ever want to do is make out that you’re a stranger in your own home. This is your home, with all your stuff and your memories and everything.” He sniffs. “With your family.”

“It’s hard,” Louis says miserably. “I feel like we have the same conversations all the time because you’re trying and I’m trying and…” He stamps his foot petulantly, angry at himself as tears prick at the backs of his eyes. “I don’t want you to be mad at me for going into your…  _ our  _ room, sorry, but I get it if you are.”

“I… god, Louis, no,” Harry tells him, voice wobbly. “Literally, if you asked to move back in today I’d totally let you. It’s your room, isn’t it?  _ Our  _ room, that is.”

“Is it still my room if I can’t remember it?” Louis’s voice is small, and his heart feels like its racing at a thousand miles an hour. “I recognise nothing, Harry. I didn’t even recognise myself in the photos in your bedside drawer.”

Harry goes still. “You… you went into my bedside drawer?”

He has no excuse for that either, and he feels his cheeks go pink, worried that this intrusion is a step too far. “I… yeah, I did,” Louis admits. “I… it’s because I found our first anniversary card in my bedside table and I wanted to see if you’d kept the one from me.” He looks down at his feet. “I’m sorry if that was too much.”

He looks up to see Harry pinching the bridge of his nose. “I… don’t know what to think, to be honest,” he grunts. “You… well,  _ my  _ Louis had no personal space boundaries anyway, so I guess I should have expected it.” He blinks a few times, then runs a hand through his hair. “Did you find anything else? I mean, like, do you have any questions?”

“I found those Polaroids,” Louis tells him again. “There’s one of me asleep, which is, um, interesting.”

To his credit, Harry doesn’t look embarrassed or shocked. He merely shrugs. “That was on your birthday two years ago,” he explains, a shy grin teasing the corners of his lips. “I woke up early to make you tea and bacon, but you weren’t having it. You were so hungover.” It’s like it’s instinctual now, Louis thinks, that he starts to toy with his wedding ring again whenever he talks about his Louis before the accident. “You kept telling me to fuck off, so I did for a bit to just gather all your presents together in the living room, then when I came back you were asleep again, but it was like you were smiling in your sleep. I grabbed one of my cameras and I just… I couldn’t help myself.” He looks down at the floor and smiles, soft and serene. “I love that photo so much.”

“Wow,” Louis says, for lack of anything else to say. “Wow, that’s…”

He doesn’t finish. Harry takes a deep breath, and neither of them say anything for a couple of minutes. Then Harry straightens up, tucks his hair behind his ear and says, “The chicken will definitely be cold now. Do you want to eat?”

“Sure,” Louis nods tensely, and accepts the plate that Harry practically shoves at him. “Thank you.”

They make their sandwiches in silence and then traipse into the living room to eat them. Harry scoffs at Louis when he feeds little bites to Fluffy, but he doesn’t actually tell him off, which makes Louis think they might be okay.

Once they’ve finished eating Louis stands up first and picks Harry’s empty plate up from the coffee table and takes it into the kitchen. He runs the tap and scrapes the crumbs into the bin, and before he’s aware he’s done it he’s popped all the food shopping away, washed the plates, and wiped down the sides. He hesitates as he realises because he doesn’t know (and shouldn’t know, right?) where everything goes in the cupboards, because Harry’s been the one cooking and feeding him since he arrived back.

Shit, maybe that doctor knew what he was talking about.

With a smile, Louis darts back towards the living room, excited to tell Harry all about it, but Harry’s fast asleep on the sofa, Fluffy curled up awkwardly between his legs. The sight of it makes Louis’s heart do a funny leap in his chest, because Harry looks so handsome even in sleep, but he doesn’t look peaceful like Louis had hoped. He looks exhausted, is the thing, and Louis casts his mind back, remembering that night when Harry slept for fifteen whole hours, and decides against waking him. He clearly needs the sleep.

He tiptoes into the room and grabs a blanket from the other sofa, draping it awkwardly over Harry’s curled up body. Fluffy wiggles out from underneath and jumps off the sofa, but Harry doesn’t stir. He snuffles and rolls over instead, now facing away from Louis.

Louis lets him sleep – he takes Fluffy for a long walk, he changes his bedsheets in the guest room, he has a long shower, and he’s just about to start on dinner when Harry wakes up, rubbing his eyes as he walks into the kitchen. He presses a kiss to the top of Louis’s damp head and doesn’t even call himself out on the mistake, and Louis finds himself sink into it a little, his body curling up to Harry’s like it knows that’s where it wants to be.

And maybe, just maybe, he’s starting to realise that it is.

*

Louis keeps the ring on his finger.

Two days later, he decides he’s had enough of pretending like he didn’t put the wedding ring on because he’s developing feelings for Harry and moves himself back into the master bedroom.

“What are you doing?” Harry asks, tentative, as Louis follows him into the bedroom around midnight, after they’ve turned all the lights off downstairs and put the dog to bed. “Did you need to grab something?”

Louis rolls his eyes in a bid to mask the nerves, and shakes his head. “No,” he breathes out. “I want to sleep in here with you.”

He’s surprised he gets it all out in one go, but now it’s been said, it’s out in the open, and Harry has no choice but to acknowledge it.

But he doesn’t, not for a good long while. He stares at Louis for what feels like ages, his expression tight and unreadable.

“Harry,” Louis says, twitchy, when Harry still hasn’t said anything after he’s counted to sixty in his head. “Harry…”

“What did you say?” Harry croaks, like he’s been hit by a tonne of bricks. “Did you just…”

“Yes,” Louis whispers, nodding fervently. He kind of wants to cry, because Harry’s initial reluctance, although not quite a rejection, still stings. “I want to sleep in here with you.”

“Why?” Harry asks, barely audible. The tension between them is palpable, and Louis wants to bolt, regrets opening his damn mouth. “Why would you say that to me?”

“What?”

“Why do you want to sleep in here, Louis?”

“Because…” Louis starts, then stops. He doesn’t actually have an answer. “Because I want to, I guess.”

“You guess?” Harry looks like he’s about to cry, which is absolutely the last thing Louis ever wanted. “You haven’t… showed any interest in wanting to be anything other than good friends or whatever. And now…”

“No, Harry,” Louis mumbles. “I haven’t but it’s because I didn’t want to admit to myself that I… had feelings for you.” He gets quieter and quieter with every forced word, but he needed to say it, and they both know Harry heard.

“What?” Harry cries, heartbreak in his voice. “No, don’t… don’t fuck with me, Louis, I can’t do this…”

“Can’t do what?”

“I can’t let you stand there and…  _ fuck,  _ this is all my fault,” Harry whimpers, shaking his head desperately. “I knew I fucked it up, I  _ knew  _ it.”

“Harry, Jesus Christ, what the hell are you on about?”

“I was too much, wasn’t I? I… I was too intense and I made you think you had to fall back in love with me even though…”

“ _ What?”  _ Louis screeches, stepping back like he’s been shoved, and he almost topples over his own feet and back down the stairs. “Harry, fucking hell. Do you… you can’t really believe that, can you?”

Harry shrugs weakly. “I had kind of accepted that we were… we were over, I guess. But you never wanted to leave, so I never pressed it, because I’d rather have you like… like this, than not at all, you know?”

“Harry, that isn’t how this thing works, not at  _ all. _ ”

“It’s not a  _ thing,  _ Louis, and you shouldn’t force yourself to fall in love with me, or even to think you’re in love with me if you can’t,” Harry spits, the tears spilling over at long last. “And part of me… part of me thinks you shouldn’t have to try because there’s still a part of me that’s convinced that we’re made for one another and all this cosmic bullshit. But then there’s the shitty selfish part of me that says you  _ should  _ try because look at this life we have together! Look at this, baby! Don’t you want this?”

“I don’t know what I want,” Louis answers, gruff and honest, his own voice threatening to crack. “I want is to fucking remember, Harry, and I would love to wake up tomorrow and look at your face and remember the first time I met you and the first time I kissed you and all that stuff that I just can’t  _ fucking remember,  _ but is it going to happen? Is it? No, probably not, and I think we’re both living in denial.”

Harry pinches the bridge of his nose and lets out a shaky exhale. “So, what? What do we do? Because I don’t know how I can be around you and not love you, alright? Regardless of whether you never remember me, I still love you the exact same and I always will. You will always,  _ always  _ be the love of my whole life. So… so what?”

Louis’s voice damn near cracks when he says, “I’m trying, Harry.” Then he takes a second to compose himself, too near tears to continue for a few tense moments. “I think we need to carry on on the basis that my memories aren’t going to come back overnight, okay? It’s been, what, two and a half months now? So, we just… we work through it. We… we go on dates and we do our normal stuff and we just… we stop walking on fucking eggshells around each other all the damn time. We’re getting better but  _ fuck,  _ I’m worried this is going to come back and bite us, the way we act sometimes.”

Harry lets out a harsh sob into the back of his hand.

“Look, I…” Louis reaches forward and snatches up Harry’s other hand. “In all this mess, even since the beginning, I have never wanted a divorce or anything like that. It took me a few weeks to get here but Harry, I know I fell in love with you for a reason. There is a reason that eighteen-year-old me jumped into your arms at that theatre camp, and there is a reason we didn’t speak but still ended up at the same university, and there’s a reason we’ve stayed together for all this time.”

Harry’s face has gone from crumpled to completely astonished in a matter of seconds as Louis just keeps spitting out words, keeps yelling out all the emotions and the hotchpotch of thoughts he’s been trying to make sense of since this ordeal began. “You don’t want a divorce?” he croaks after another awfully tense silence. Louis shakes his head.

“Why would I want a divorce?”

Harry shrugs desperately. “I don’t  _ know, _ ” he shrills. “Because you don’t know me?” He hangs his head, and when he next speaks his voice is harsh and raw. “Because you don’t love me anymore?”

Louis opens his mouth but the words die in his throat, like Harry has just chucked a bucket of ice water over him. “ _ Harry, _ ” he breathes, shaky. “Harry.  _ Fuck. _

“Well, you don’t,” Harry says miserably. “This isn’t love yet, is it?”

Louis flounders for words. “I… I mean, maybe not quite yet but  _ Harry…”  _ He shakes his head. “I’m not following you in here because I want to use the fancy shower. I’m following you in here because I… fuck, I like you so much. Even if it’s not like before… at least not yet, I mean, I hope you know by now that you mean so much to me.”

It’s enough to coax a startled albeit small laugh from Harry’s lips, so Louis counts it as kind of a win. His heart is thumping hard under his t-shirt and he fights the urge to squirm under his gaze.

“Okay,” Harry says eventually, nodding meekly. He sighs, opens his mouth, then closes it again.

Louis takes that as his chance.

“Can I kiss you?” he blurts. He feels his cheeks heat up and his voice near cracks, but he wants this  _ so  _ badly, so he remains unwavering. “Please, Harry?” He coughs, and then tentatively tries something new. “Baby?”

Harry looks frozen in place, his mouth now hanging open and his eyes practically bulging out of his head. They stare at each other for a few seconds, the only sounds their laboured breathing. Louis’s terrified he’s fucked up, and he’s about to step backwards and bolt, but then Harry lets out a sound that’s almost animalistic and lunges forward, takes Louis’s face in both his hands, and kisses him.

It’s hot, heavy and hard, and Louis finds himself groaning against Harry’s mouth, hands gripping awkwardly at his shoulders. He doesn’t know exactly what he’s doing – he hasn’t been kissed in so, so long – but he follows Harry’s lead as best he can. It’s all slick lips and soft whines, and he finds himself sink into it, pressing closer and closer to Harry as it goes on.

“Fuck,” he grunts against his lips, then kisses him again, and again, and again. Louis isn’t a writer and he’s never been particularly good with words, but the word that swirls through his head is  _ sensual.  _ But it’s not sexual, it’s hot and it’s overpowering, and as cliché as it sounds, it feels like Louis is coming home.

The attraction and lust he’s feeling is something he hasn’t felt before, but then again maybe that’s because the last person he remembers kissing was Emily Flanagan beside the bike sheds at school. This is nothing like that. Harry was the person he was meant to kiss, and even though he worries he’s slobbery and out of practice Harry kisses him back like he’s starving. Like he gets it. Like he’s in love.

They eventually pull back for a split second to steady their breathing, but Louis feels far from steady. He feels like he’s floating, like he’s never coming back down. He stares up at Harry and Harry stares at him, then he darts forward to kiss him again, and for a good long while they just don’t stop.

For a while it remains intense, hot lips on hot lips, tongues flicking against one another and the occasional nip of teeth, but then it softens, becoming short, soft pecks. When they do eventually pull apart Louis goes to lean back, but Harry winds a hand around the back of his head and moves him in, resting their foreheads together.

“Harry,” Louis dares to breathe.

“Lou,” Harry croaks. His lips are swollen, his eyes glassy and damp. He looks the most beautiful Louis has ever seen him look, and he lets his eyes drop closed for a split second, thinking  _ I did that to him.  _ He opens his eyes and smiles, and Harry mirrors him. “ _ Louis, baby. _ ”

“ _ Harry, _ ” Louis says again, and then he giggles. “Wow.”

“Wow,” Harry echoes, grinning from ear to ear. “Fuck, darling. You have no idea how much I needed that.”

“You’re welcome,” Louis says in a small voice. He brings his hand up and rests it on the side of Harry’s neck, curling his fingers lightly into the hair that decorates Harry’s nape. “I needed it too, I think.”

“Yeah?” Harry questions, shy. Then he drops his eyes and shakes his head against Louis’s. “Bloody hell, I feel like this is our first date or something.”

“Same,” Louis admits, and then, “does it make me a hussy if I still want to sleep in the same bed as you?”

“No,” Harry says, “definitely not. I think it would be rude not to, actually.”

“Good,” Louis chuckles, then in a brave move he doesn’t see coming from himself he darts forward and presses a soft kiss against the corner of Harry’s mouth. Harry flushes a pretty pink and they both can’t seem to stop grinning as they move into their bedroom and start to get ready for bed. As Harry cleans his teeth Louis trots quickly over to the guest bedroom and grabs his pyjamas, undressing and redressing in the hallway before he discards his day clothes to the side, flicks the lights, and moves back into his and Harry’s bedroom (just the thought makes him grin again), closing the door behind him.

Harry’s perched on the edge of the bed, wearing just an old t-shirt and a pair of boxers. Louis shuffles in and stands at the foot of the bed, and doesn’t say anything for a second.

“I usually sleep naked,” Harry informs him quietly. “But I don’t want you to feel like… well, you know.”

“Thank you,” Louis replies, and he really means it. Kissing Harry is one thing, but sleeping next to a naked Harry, husband or not, is not something he’s ready for, not yet. “I really appreciate that.”

“Anything for you,” Harry tells him softly, reaching for his hand and giving it a quick squeeze. “I’m just happy to have you back in bed with me again.” Then he blanches. “You know what I mean.”

“I do, and I hope you know I trust you,” Louis murmurs. “So thank you, really.” He moves onto the bed shyly. “Can you kiss me again?”

Harry nods and bites at his bottom lip, eyes dropping to Louis’s mouth again. “We need to talk too,” he says, “but I also just want to hold you.”

“Yes,” Louis breathes, scrambling forward and slowly, carefully, pressing his mouth to Harry’s. Harry makes a sound against him and turns to kiss Louis properly, arms around his waist as he presses Louis down onto the mattress. Pliant under the now familiar touch, Louis goes easily, and he wraps his arms around Harry’s neck and lets himself be kissed until they’re both too tired and can’t feel their lips anymore.

Talking is for the morning now, and both men collapse under the covers not long after. They fall asleep facing one another, bodies tilted towards each other’s warmth, and Louis doesn’t want to admit it to himself but sleeping here, in his own bed and next to the body he’s slept beside for years now, lets him drift into a better sleep than he’s had in weeks.

_ * _

Louis almost doesn’t want to talk about it, lest this lovely little illusion that they’ve built up in the past twelve hours shatter and die on its arse. But Harry is adamant that they’re going to, and when Louis blinks awake in the low light of the bedroom in the morning he finds Harry staring at him, brows furrowed and mouth set in a tight line.

“You’ll give yourself wrinkles doing that,” he croaks, throat still thick with sleep. “What’s the matter?”

“I just…” Harry starts, then he groans and rolls onto his back, taking a deep breath as he goes. Louis reaches out and puts his hand on his chest, tugging him back over. “Okay, look. Can I be blunt?”

Louis nods slowly, a little worried.

“I just… I fucking love you so much and I’m having a bit of an internal freak out right now. Sorry.”

“Why?” Louis asks in a soft voice, and for a split second he thinks he’s fucked it completely, pushed Harry too far before they’re both ready. “I… I really like you too.”

“I don’t want you to feel like you have to be here,” Harry all but whispers, staring at Louis so deep, so intensely, that Louis almost wants to squirm. “I don’t want you to ever figure out that it’s not actually me you like, it’s the idea or, like, you feel like you have to want to be with me.”

Louis blinks. “Harry,” he says softly, fisting his hand in the front of Harry’s sleep shirt. “Harry, I married you, for fuck’s sake.”

“Old you married me,” Harry tries to argue, but Louis shushes him.

“I’m still me,” he says desperately. “And it… it kinda hurts that you don’t see that, you know? Like I don’t know if old me is never coming back, but… in sickness and in health and all that. We promised each other that, and I know I meant it, even if I can’t exactly remember saying it.”

“You’ve changed your tune,” Harry observes, which makes Louis blush. “You were so…” He looks down, and when he speaks next his voice cracks. “You didn’t like me or want me around until, like, a month ago.”

“I was scared,” Louis whispers. He didn’t want to have this conversation at all, but if they’re going to then he’s at least got to get his thoughts out before he loses his nerve. “I still am. I worry that you still see me as Louis the injured rather than Louis your husband.”

Harry looks guilty at that. “I’m sorry,” he frowns, then he sighs. “I never meant to do that. If I did I guess it’s partly because I didn’t think  _ you  _ wanted me to see you as my husband.”

Now it’s Louis’s turn to frown. “Why would you think that?”

“Because you used to shy away from pet names and touches and all that stuff, and that was so much of our relationship,” Harry says, shrugging against the mattress. “And I know that sounds stupid because you don’t get married based on those things, but it was like… you didn’t want me to be your husband, and I couldn’t, like, be around you and not do all that stuff. So I… I guess I pulled back a bit and if that meant I treated you differently than you wanted then I’m so sorry.” He strokes Louis’s cheek. “You have no idea how many it makes me that I can call you baby again and you don’t look freaked out.”

Louis smiles at him. “I like it when you call me baby,” he admits softly. “And I pushed you away too, I know I did. I didn’t mean to, but… but you know why I did it, don’t you?”

Harry nods. “I do,” he murmurs. “I always got why you were pushing me away, and the thing is, I didn’t want to be the one to pull back if that was what you wanted, do you see?” His eyes drop closed for a second and he inhales shakily. “My priority here… well,  _ always _ , to be honest with you, is  _ you.  _ And if you wanted me gone…”

“I never wanted you gone,” Louis cuts in, a little offended. “I wanted you to back off, yes, but… come on, from the second I woke up you were right there and I… I’d lost my memories, granted, but it didn’t take long to work out that you were staying. And even though it was awkward and a little bit intense at first I… I liked you. And now I happen to… to really like you.” He pauses. “And I’m sorry I broke that glass by chucking it across the kitchen. That was a dick move.”

Harry laughs weakly, then presses his lips together and lets out a sigh of relief. “Jesus Christ, Louis, you have no idea how much I needed to hear that from you.” He moves his arm out, then pulls it back, hesitant. “Can I hug you?”

“You don’t need to ask,” Louis says with a small smile. “Not anymore.”

“Oh, baby _ ,”  _ Harry moans softly, and he moves forward and gathers Louis underneath his arm, tucking his face into the top of Louis’s head. Louis goes pliant in his hold and wraps a hand around his wrist, pulling himself as close to Harry as possible, and he breathes in the scent of the man he’s come to care for so much and thinks,  _ yeah, he really is a goodun. I’m glad I married him. _

And from there, now that their fears have been aired and their reservations worked out, the couple go from strength to strength. Louis doesn’t move back into the guest room and he wakes up most mornings with a mouthful of hair, but he’s always warm, happy and content. He spends his days at home playing with the dog and getting to know his wardrobe and the contents of his desk and stuff to do with his work. He accompanies Harry, who has decided to start picking up work again, on a couple of local shoots, and he revels in the way he loves his job, the way it’s clear that behind the camera is where he belongs.

He spends more time with Liam (when he’s in the country) and Niall, heading out to the cinema and the pub and what are apparently some of his favourite places to eat. He and Harry go and watch a more plays, even a couple at the theatre where he used to work, and while there he meets Jesy, in charge of sound and light, and Eleanor, in charge of costumes, and falls in love with them both.

He takes up football again and starts going running with Harry (some mornings, not all) and one day he learns Harry’s stuck in traffic and will be home late so he rustles up a very basic spag bol as best he can. Harry kisses him up against the oven and eats every single bite, and it’s the most domestic Louis ever remembers feeling.

They’ve restarted their traditional Friday night pub gatherings, something that Harry informs him he began last year and insisted they keep up with because otherwise they’d hardly ever see each other, what with their busy jobs and frantic lives. Louis is reintroduced to Perrie (a bubbly blonde who he also met at uni, apparently) and her girlfriend Leigh-Anne, Niall’s girlfriend Laura (also loud, also Irish, also hilarious and brilliant fun), and Jade and Jed, a sweet couple who live three doors down from Harry and Louis. Jesy brings her partner along, Eleanor hers, and along with Niall and Liam it’s always a very lively, brilliantly funny crowd.

It’s not quite love with Harry still, not yet, but Louis doesn’t doubt it’ll come with time. He’s in over his head, but when he thinks about it he realises he isn’t, and this is simply the relearning of something he did before that came so naturally to them both.

And he must admit that he’s loving every second of it.

Harry hadn’t been lying when he’d told Louis they were living a great life. He’s twenty-seven years old and he’s already got a lovely little home with a man who loves him, a steady job with decent regular paycheques, a fluffy puppy, a family who love and support him, and some of the best friends he could ever ask for.

Why the hell did he ever let himself think he wouldn’t want to remember this?

There’s only one thing that Louis doesn’t fully understand, and that’s why nobody will tell him who or what this elusive Z is.

He’d totally forgotten about it, in all honesty, but then one Friday night Liam scampers away from the table at speed, phone clutched to his chest and a bemused, dopey grin on his face.

“Must be Z,” Perrie laughs as they all watch him hurry outside, despite the fact it’s pouring down with rain. “Soppy bastard.”

“Oh, yeah, how is Z?” Jade asks, and Louis finds himself hanging onto every word already. “I haven’t seen him since…”

“Wait, since last summer?” Niall chips in. “Neither have I, I don’t think.”

“Me neither,” says Jesy from the other end of the table. “Haz, do you speak with him ever…  _ oh _ ?”

“What’s going on?” Louis asks loudly, turning to look at Harry, who is currently making dramatic cutting gestures across his neck, face set in a panic and his eyes wide. He then glances at everyone around the table, eyebrows raised. “Who is Z?”

Nobody answers him and everyone looks exceptionally guilty.

“Niall?”

Niall chokes on his pint, like he wasn’t expecting Louis to single him out, and hurries to wipe whatever he’s spilled up with his sleeve. “I don’t speak English,” he grunts, then coughs messily into the back of his hand. “Fuck this, we all know I’m a terrible actor. I’m going for a smoke. Good luck, Haz.”

Harry glares and flips him off as he trundles towards the door, and before Louis can even open his mouth to ask what the hell just happened everyone else has muttered excuses about needing a smoke or going over to the bar. They’re gone in a matter of seconds.

“What the  _ fuck? _ ” Louis huffs, crossing his arms and turning back to Harry. “Why won’t they tell me? Why won’t  _ you  _ tell me?”

Harry takes a long,  _ long  _ pull of his pint. “I don’t know, baby,” he says weakly. He is, frankly, one of the worst liars Louis has ever known. “I guess… I mean, I just don’t know.”

Louis slaps him on the arm and then sulks into his beer until Niall buys him a big bag of pork scratchings to distract him, and then it’s blissfully (on everyone but Louis’s part anyway) forgotten.

At the end of the month, Harry takes him to a restaurant that they apparently both love, and he offers Louis a wager.

“I bet you that I can order all three of your courses – starter, main,  _ and  _ pudding – without you even looking at the menu, and you’re going to love it all.”

He’s dressed up already – he called he was jumping in the shower practically the second he came through the door after work, and he’d remerged smelling divine, dressed up in some fancy floral shirt and painfully tight-looking pinstripe trousers, his hair soft and still slightly damp.

_ Radiant,  _ Louis thinks the word is to describe him.

Louis peers at him over his glasses. He hasn’t moved from the sofa all day, having discovered this incredible app on their telly called Netflix. He’s been binge-watching Louis Theroux documentaries all day and he isn’t sure he’s ready to move.

“It hardly seems fair because you clearly know more about this than I do,” he tuts, and rolls his eyes. “We’ve been there loads, didn’t you say?”

“Yes, but you’re going to be so surprised at what you eat,” Harry tells him, eyes glinting mischievously. “I promise you, babe, you’ll love it.” His bottom lip juts out and he leans forward into Louis’s space. “Please, baby? Please?”

Louis pretends to think about it, but another thing he’s recently learned about himself is that all Harry has to do is pout and call him baby and he’s like putty in his hands. “Alright, fine,” he laments, then leans forward into Harry’s space. “If you give me a kiss now I’ll be ready in twenty minutes.”

As predicted, Harry is more than happy to oblige.

Louis has a quick shower, changes into a shirt and fresh jeans, spritzes himself with some cologne, and goes back downstairs to meet Harry, all within eighteen minutes. Harry kisses him quickly before he twirls Louis on the spot with a grin.

“Don’t you scrub up nicely?”

“I try,” Louis hums, bouncing up on his tiptoes for another kiss. He hasn’t gotten enough of kissing Harry, not at all, and he wonders how he went so long without it. “Are we walking or driving?”

“We can do either,” Harry tells him, reaching past him to grab his coat. He helps Louis into his like the perfect gentleman that he is, then winds his scarf around his neck and pecks him on the nose. “If you’re cold I’ll drive.”

“Aren’t you the perfect gentleman?” Louis teases, going in for another kiss. And another. And another. “If you hadn’t already married me I’d take this as you trying to woo me.”

“Oh, baby,” Harry says, dropping his voice to try and sound sultry, “I’m going to be wooing you for the rest of our lives. I’m pretty sure I’ll be trying to woo you from across the nursing home.” Then he grabs his car keys and opens the front door, bowing as he goes. “M’lady.”

“Git,” Louis grunts, but he goes out the door and clips down the steps, shuffling around to the passenger’s side of Harry’s car. “Come on then, where are we going? Is it far?”

“Um, not too far,” Harry says, beeping the car open and hopping inside. He turns the heating right up and rubs his hands together. “It is a bit too cold to walk though. S’probably only about twenty minutes away or so, but it’s bloody freezing.”

“Okay,” Louis says with a quick shrug, buckling in. “I trust your judgment, Mr Styles.”

Harry grins and reverses out of the driveway, and it’s only a brief five-minute trip before he’s pulling into the car park of a rather upmarket looking place, just off the beaten track and next to the park that they sometimes walk Fluffy in. Louis hadn’t even noticed it was here.

“This is very romantic,” he coos as they get out the car, slamming the door and immediately reaching for Harry’s hand. “And this is one of our favourites, you say?”

Harry nods and leads Louis towards the door. “This is the restaurant you proposed to me in,” he says simply, and Louis stops walking and his eyes go wide. He turns to look at Harry and he fish-mouths, which makes Harry snort and slap his thigh in amusement. “Baby, I’m joking, I’m totally joking.”

“Bastard,” Louis breathes, and punches him hard on the arm for it. “You nearly gave me a heart attack.”

Harry’s still grinning, the arsehole, as they walk out of the cold and into the warm restaurant. “I’ll tell you the actual story of our proposal tonight if you’d like though. I am trying to woo you, after all.”

Louis narrows his eyes and considers it as Harry gives the waiter their name and they’re led over to their table. They sit down, and out of habit Louis reaches for the menu, but it’s unceremoniously snatched from his grasp before he can even read the name of the restaurant on the front.

“Ah, ah, ah,” Harry tuts, tucking it to one side. He doesn’t even bother to reach for a menu for himself, just waggles his eyebrows at Louis instead. “What did I tell you?”

“What am I meant to get out of this wager again?” Louis asks, crossing his arms.

Harry shrugs, and Louis watches how his cheeks glow pink even in the low candlelight. “Hadn’t thought of that. Just wanted to take you out on a fancy date, really.”

“Really,” Louis echoes in the same tone. He reaches for Harry’s hand and strokes over the knuckles with his fingernails, then presses down on his wedding ring. “Well, I really appreciate it, Haz, I really do. But I am so happy to just… to do whatever we were doing before at Nando’s or KFC or whatever.”

“Me too,” Harry says lowly, threading his fingers through Louis’s and squeezing. “I want to bring us back to normal, as best I can. And this…” He goes even pinker, ducking his head. “Today is the anniversary of the day we met again at our uni, so…” He trails off and looks up over the rim of his water glass shyly. “Happy anniversary, darling.”

“Happy anniversary,” Louis parrots, trying to keep his voice steady. He hadn’t been expecting that at all. And while he loves and really appreciates it when Harry pulls something like this out of the bag, but once again it weighs heavy on his heart, another reminder that he just can’t remember his past with this beautiful soul in front of him. “Harry, I…”

“Good evening, welcome to Miller & Carter,” the waiter interrupts, breaking the moment. “Can I fetch you gentlemen some drinks at all?”

“Hiya,” Harry says, turning to look at the waiter without dropping Louis’s hand. “Some tap water to start, then I’ll have a lemonade and he’ll have a Kronenburg.”

Without bothering to write it down, the waiter nods and disappears. Harry turns back to Louis and squeezes his hand again.

“What were you saying?”

Louis shakes his head, and instead asks, “can you tell me about it? How we met again when we were at uni?”

“Course,” Harry nods, then launches into the story of how he’d been walking across campus one day with his headphones in, minding his own business, when he’d felt hands press hard on his shoulder and he’d stopped walking abruptly, nearing tripping over his own feet. He’d spun around and seen Louis stood there, mouth agape and speechless for the first time since Harry had known him. He recalls how he’d practically ripped his earbuds out of his ears and thrown himself in Louis’s arms, and they’d stayed there, hugging in the centre of the pathway for several long minutes.

“We never looked back,” Harry says, barely pausing as the waiter delivers their drinks. “We started dating, I lived with you in my third year of uni instead of in a dingy student flat, and here we are.”

“Wow,” Louis says, because right now he doesn’t have anything else to say.

The waiter clears his throat awkwardly.

“I do apologise for interrupting, but are you ready to order?”

“Yes,” Harry croaks, tearing his eyes away from Louis reluctantly. “I’ll have the calamari to start, and he’ll have the scallops.”

Louis’s eyes go wide – he’s not been one for eating any kind of seafood a day in his life. “ _ Harry. _ ”

“He’ll have the scallops,” Harry says to the slightly perplexed looking waiter. “And for mains I’ll have the ribeye cooked medium rare, and he’ll have the sea bass.”

“ _ Harry Styles, _ ” Louis shrills, and the waiter looks tentative, but Harry stands firm.

“Thank you,” he says sweetly, and the waiter raises his eyebrows but shuffles off. The grin gracing Harry’s face is positively gleeful, and Louis kicks him under the table.

“What the hell?” he whines. “Harry, really? I don’t think I like fish.”

“You like this fish, I promise,” Harry says merrily, sipping his lemonade. “I wouldn’t have ordered it if you didn’t.”

Eyes narrowed, Louis says, “I still don’t know if I trust you.” He sighs dramatically. “But it’s what I’m getting so…”

“Oh, hush,” Harry chortles, and squeezes his hand again. “Trust me, I’m your husband.”

Despite his reservations, Louis finds his chest swelling a little with pride at the reminder, and while he’ll never say it out loud, he does trust Harry. “That you are,” he replies softly, and he takes a second to take in this man, this stupid dork of a man that he’s so close to falling in love with, and he presses his lips together before he says something he’s not quite ready for yet. “That you are, you stupid bastard.”

Both surprisingly and unsurprisingly, the meal is rich, meaty and delicious, and Louis thoroughly enjoys every (slightly tentative) bite. For pudding, they split a highly indulgent plate of chocolate goodies, and by the time they’ve paid the bill and trudged out of there Louis is so,  _ so  _ glad that they hadn’t elected to walk here.

They drive home in a comfortable silence, and Louis feels more at peace in Harry’s company than he has in a long time. It’s relaxed and familiar between them, and Louis thinks that this evening has done them wonders, he really does. Harry’s opened up a lot more about their past, enough that Louis can start to picture bits of it as if they’re memories.

He wishes he could remember their time in Glasgow, though. That bond they had developed and nurtured up there sounds unique, simple but complicated, and he thanks his lucky stars that they both ended up at the same uni.

When they’re home and tucked up in bed with warm mugs of steaming tea – lemon and ginger for Harry and good ol’ Yorkshire for Louis – Louis asks to hear the other story that he’s been dying to hear since Harry brought it up in the restaurant. He clears his throat and turns to Harry expectantly, and Harry closes his book and turns to Louis, grinning soft and content.

“Yes, Lou?”

“Can I hear about how I proposed to you now?”

Harry’s smile grows in size, and he says, “A nice little bedtime story, eh?”

Louis nods. “I’m dying to know. I bet it was so lame.”

Harry laughs. “Cheesy, yes. Lame… I don’t know about that. It was literally so cheesy though.”

Louis chuckles around the rim of his mug. “Come on then, Casanova.”

Harry rests his mug on his bedside table and clears his throat. “So about, hm, two and a half years ago, you got your job working at the theatre and I’d just finished three months of crazy constant bookings and clients and stuff,  _ but  _ I’d come out the other end with a nice little bonus and you’d just scored a considerably higher wage so we decided to treat ourselves. So, we booked a little holiday to the Maldives.”

Louis whistles and nods approvingly. “Bloody fancy, that.”

“It was,” Harry agrees. “We pulled out all the stops for it, booked a four-star all-inclusive hotel, boat tours, candlelit dinners, the bloody lot. It was so beautiful over there; tropical weather and cocktails on the beach and water so crystal clear…  _ fuck,  _ what I wouldn’t give to go back, Lou.”

Louis laughs quietly. “Maybe we should, one day.”

Harry reaches out, wraps a warm hand around Louis’s wrist. “Yeah, I’d like that,” he murmurs, then clears his throat again. He doesn’t move his hand away. “So yeah, we were in this condo and we’d done all this fancy stuff and we’d had this fucking brilliant day, Lou – we’d gone swimming in the early morning, then done some shopping and you’d treated me to this designer shirt…” He giggles. “Then I spent a long time thanking you for the designer shirt back in our condo, if you know what I mean.”

Louis almost chokes on his tea, but he tries to brush past it, smiling through the pain. “Oh.”

“Yeah,” Harry continues happily, seemingly oblivious to Louis’s discomfort which…  _ interesting _ . He barrels on. “And later we went to this seafood restaurant because, you know, you like seafood now…” Louis snorts. “And after that we took a long walk down the beach – cheesy as bloody anything – and fuck. It was still so warm outside, and we settled in this little corner where nobody was walking and we just… we talked for bloody hours, baby, about nothingness. And you…” He smiles wistfully, cheeks colouring ever so slightly as he looks down to where he’s holding onto Louis, and he slides his hand down so their fingers are linked. “You had me tucked under your arm, and you had a hand in my hair, and suddenly you lent forward and whispered ‘marry me’ in my ear.”

“Holy shit,” Louis coughs, because that is cheesy as  _ hell.  _ “Wow, listen to me. Did I even have a ring?”

Harry nods, then without letting go of Louis’s hand he reaches towards his bedside drawer and pulls out an old iPhone box, which he then opens one-handedly. “I keep it in here because we lost the box it came in somewhere on that bloody beach,” he laughs. “I lost a diamond from it about a year ago, so I just like to keep it safe in here until I can get one put back in.”

Louis nods and takes the ring from Harry, lifting it up to examine it. It’s beautiful – a simple gold band with the space for two diamonds at the front, but as Harry said one of the holes is vacant. “Wow,” he says, for lack of anything else to say. “It’s… what happened to the diamond?”

Harry shrugs. “Lost it at a shoot one day. Got back to my car and it had bloody fallen out, I was fuming.”

Louis runs his thumb over it. “So then what happened, you know, after I popped the question?”

Harry practically beams. “You kissed me, or I kissed you, I can’t remember. We did a lot of kissing, even though I was crying like a fucking baby.”

Louis shakes his head fondly.

“And then we went back to the condo and we just… we fell into bed,” Harry concludes, shrugging again. “Don’t think we left that bed for a good forty-eight hours after that.”

Louis’s smile is tight, but the story he’s just been told is lovely and he’s so happy for them. “Best holiday ever?”

“Best holiday ever,” Harry confirms, then leans forward and kisses him softly. “Let’s go again, Lou. Not… not right now, obviously, but soon. When things are better.”

Louis nods. “Things are getting better,” he says, then leans forward to kiss Harry again, firmer this time. “I think I’m doing a lot better.”

“You are.” Harry’s smile radiates pride, and Louis is falling in love with this man. “We got this, Louis Tomlinson, we got this.”

“Why didn’t we take each other’s surnames?” Louis has to ask, because that’s another question that’s been bugging him a lot. “Why aren’t I Louis Styles?”

“Dunno, to be honest,” Harry answers after a minute, chewing on his lip. “It came up a few times before the wedding but we never got around to making an actual decision.” He pauses. “We both had business cards already made, you know?” He chews his lip some more. “Bloody hell, maybe we should have done.” And then, shyly, “Do you want to be Louis Styles?”

“I think… I think it’s something I’d consider,” Louis tells him, tucking himself as close as he can to his husband. “Give me a couple of months to think about it, but… yeah, yeah, I can see us doing that.”

Harry’s still grinning even as he falls asleep a few minutes later, body curled around Louis’s like a comma. Louis’s bone-tired and emotionally exhausted after today, but there’s one thing he just can’t shake from his mind, one question he isn’t sure how or when to ask Harry yet.

_ Sex. _

It’s a thought that Louis can’t shake, because as much as he thinks he wants to eventually have sex with Harry, he has no idea if it’s on the cards. He knows there are condoms in his bedside drawer, Harry told him they had a lot of sex while they were in the Maldives, and he’s done enough snooping to find some…  _ things  _ in the back of his wardrobe. But he still hasn’t asked and Harry hasn’t initiated anything in the good few weeks they’ve been sharing a bed, so he just… is not sure.

He debates on how he could bring it up, or whether to bring it up at all, but luckily (or unluckily, depending on how you look at the circumstances) fate brings it up for him. It’s a lazy morning a week or so later, and he and Harry don’t have an alarm set, and Louis wakes up slowly and clumsily, finding himself curled up around Harry’s back, an arm draped across his middle. He’s warm, toasty, and neither him nor Harry have anywhere to be today.

He’s also hard, and pressed a little too close to Harry’s back for Harry not to notice when he wakes up.

He blanches and almost yelps out loud before he shuffles backwards as fast as he can without waking Harry. It’s not that he’s never had a boner before – he’s twenty-seven years old, after all – but when he wakes up he usually rushes off to sort it in the privacy of the bathroom, and he sorts them out quickly and efficiently.

But as he moves back, the hand that was draped across Harry’s middle knocks…  _ something  _ too.

Apparently he’s not the only one who’s woken up with a hard-on.

“Shit,” Louis hisses, unable to move away fast enough before Harry grunts and starts to stir. “Shit, shit…”

“Lou?” The very sleepy-sounding Harry interrupts his panicked ramblings. “Lou, you ‘wake?”

“Uh, yeah.” Louis wobbles and grins awkwardly as Harry rolls over inelegantly, blinking himself awake. “Hello.”

“Hello,” Harry croaks, smiling dopily. His hair is matted and all over the place, his bare chest pale and milky against the black bedsheets. Louis wants to reach out and touch him, but he refrains, still concerned about the problem in his underpants. “What s’time?”

“No idea, I’ve only just woken up myself,” Louis admits. “Wanted to go to the bathroom, hang on.”

“Okay,” Harry nods, but instead of closing his eyes like Louis had anticipated (and hoped) he would, he continues to watch Louis in tired amusement. “Come back and cuddle after?”

“Sure,” Louis nods, the word almost getting lost in his throat as he tries to work out how to hide this. He’s only in boxers and an old top that won’t cover anything, and he’s got to walk past Harry’s line of sight to get to their ensuite. All in all, it looks like he’s scuppered.

He decides to throw caution to the wind and just makes a dash for it. It’s undignified and unattractive, the way he scuttles across the room and slams the bathroom door as he goes, where he immediately presses the heel of his hand into his cock as hard as he can and wills it to go further south than Antarctica.

_ My grandparents. Hepatitis. Wet burps. Mustard. Margaret Thatcher naked.  _ Niall _ naked. _

It takes way, way too long for his boner to finally subside, and when he feels like he’s been there a small age he remerges with his tail between his legs, looking as sheepish as he feels. Harry’s now sat up in bed, scrolling away on his phone, but he locks it and slides it back onto his bedside table once Louis’s back by the bed.

“Hi,” Louis says awkwardly as he slides back under the covers, tucking them up to his chin.

“Hi,” Harry echoes, then mimics Louis and buries himself under the duvet as best he can. “You alright, love?”

Louis nods into his cocoon. “Course, yeah,” he hums, trying and failing to keep his face neutral. “I’m fine, why wouldn’t I be?”

Harry’s eyes narrow a bit. “Just, you were in there for fifteen minutes, sweetheart, that’s all.”

Louis’s eyes go wide – he hadn’t realised it was  _ that  _ long. “Oh, fuck,” he groans, mostly to himself. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Harry says, then reaches his hand forward to press it against Louis’s forehead. “You are boiling hot, baby, are you alright?”

Louis groans again; Harry must know, and he hates and loves that he’s playing dumb in equal measure. “I’m fine,” he says again, keeping his gaze steely. “I’m honestly, really fine.”

“Okay,” Harry says, smiling brightly, and Louis thinks he’s probably ready to let it go. But he doesn’t think that  _ he  _ is.

“Hey,” he says lowly, tucking the duvet up a little farther, if that’s even possible at this point. “Do we… um, can I ask you something, Harry?”

Harry nods, blinking at him all curious and innocent and beautiful. Louis barrels on.

“So recently I’ve been, like, thinking a little… or a lot, if I’m being honest, and I needed to know if… well, the thing is, the thing is that I’m just a little confused…”

“Louis, baby, you can ask me anything,” Harry says gently.

“Do we have sex?” Louis hears himself blurting before he can shut himself down. His mind is screaming at him to shut up already, but his mouth, apparently, is just going to keep on going. “I just wonder because, like, sometimes I think I want to have sex with you, or at least, I mean, I would like to have sex with you in the future, definitely. But I just… there’s something in my brain that tells me I’m not ready, it’s not right, and clearly… clearly you must have seen me naked and we’ve made love and we’ve done stuff but I just… I don’t know where I stand with it because…”

“Louis,” Harry cuts in gently, moving forward to cup Louis’s cheek, where he quietens him with a couple of quick kisses. “Louis, it’s okay. I’ve… I’ve been waiting for you to ask me this question, if I’m honest.”

Louis, who feels more tightly wound than an old pocket watch, shakes his head and moans softly. “You were?” He sniffs. “So… does that mean there’s something wrong with me?”

Horror flashes across Harry’s face. “ _ No,  _ Jesus Christ, absolutely not,” he says firmly. He shuffles closer and rests his forehead against Louis’s, then kisses him on the nose. “Absolutely fucking not.”

“Okay,” Louis sniffs. That makes him feel a little better, even though his heart is still jackhammering against his chest so violently he thinks Harry can probably hear it. “So…”

“When I met you in Glasgow, we were both virgins,” Harry whispers as he tangles their legs together. Louis nods. “We were up there for five weeks together, and we were both still so young so, like, sex wasn’t even really a thing for us yet. I was happy just making out with you in the bunk.”

Louis laughs quietly. “Good to know.”

“When I met you again, we jumped back into a relationship almost straight away,” Harry continues. Louis nods again. “We were pretty typical of student couples – we would study together and go to Nando’s or Pizza Express for dates and think we were super trendy and classy, and we would kiss a hell of a lot. But we never went further, not for nearly a whole year.”

“A year?” Louis croaks. That seems like a bloody long time. If someone in his sixth form had been with someone for six weeks and they hadn’t shagged them then that was considered lame and frigid. “We waited a year?”

Harry shrugs. “I would have waited longer. I wanted to wait until you were one hundred and fifty percent ready. I needed to hear it from you.”

“But why?” Louis needs to know. “Why did I make you wait that long?” He pauses. “Do I like sex?”

“You do,” Harry confirms. “But it’s… it’s really a thing for us more than you liking the acts themselves… oh, god, I’m going to really fuck up the explanation of this, I know I am.”

“Explanation of what?”

Harry audibly swallows. “When we hit the six-month mark and we’d said I love you and stuff, we started, you know, talking about it and why it hadn’t happened yet. It was probably the most nervous I’ve ever seen you and it… it broke my heart, honestly, because if you never even wanted to have sex then I’d never have sex again.”

“Harry…”

“But we did some googling and we drank a lot of wine and we stumbled across this website that defines loads of different sexualities,” Harry explains, then he takes a deep breath. “I don’t suppose you know what asexuality means? If you’ve done any googling since your accident?”

Louis shakes his head and thinks for a second. “Isn’t that, like, where a thing can have a baby with itself?”

“Yes and no,” says Harry. “It is that, but it’s also a sexuality that means you aren’t sexually attracted to, well, anyone. Your sex drive can be low or non-existent, and while you are still romantically attracted to me, it doesn’t follow that you necessarily find me sexually attractive.”

Holy fuck.

“Oh,” is all Louis can muster for a good few moments. “Wow.”

“Listen,” Harry says, bundling him up under his chin and holding him close. “Sexuality is way fluid, baby. And I want you to know that there’s nothing wrong with you at  _ all,  _ never has been. You are my favourite person in the world and I love you so much, and I just want you to be happy. And you were so happy when we found this explanation, I can’t even tell you.”

Louis finds himself nodding against Harry’s chest, and he wraps his arms around his back and clings to him for a long, long time. His head is spinning at a thousand miles an hour, because suddenly… suddenly it all makes some sense.

There’s a name for people like him. There’s a label for people who don’t experience sexual attraction, there’s a title for people who feel like sex isn’t something they want, and it’s overwhelming and relieving and terrifying all at once. Because Louis knew, even at the tender age of seventeen, that yes, he fancied boys, but no, maybe he didn’t want to have sex with any of them. If he ever got married and he trusted the person enough then yes, maybe he would consider it, but the idea of fucking a randomer felt uncomfortable and something way, way out of his depth.

It’s not that he wasn’t curious, or even that he was scared to have sex. It’s just… his brain and his penis were on two different wavelengths. He’d tried watching porn and he’d hated it, and he’d tried wanking away his morning boner but it had always felt  _ clinical,  _ almost. Not as pleasurable as everyone else seemed to find it. Not as desirable as the boys in his school boasted about.

“Wait,” he croaks suddenly, pulling back a little and blinking away his tears. “So, wait. We still have sex though, don’t we?”

Harry nods and strokes back Louis’s fringe. “Yeah, we… we do. You see, sexuality is a really fluid thing and then… well, we did some more research and we came across this term called demisexuality.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s like… what you’re feeling is kind of a grey area?” Harry tells him. “So if you think of asexuality as a concept as being on a spectrum, you’re kind of in the middle, if that makes sense. If you… if you have a strong emotional connection to a person, if you love them, then sex may be on the cards for you and them.”

“And that’s us?”

“I think so,” Harry nods. “I mean, when we started having sex it was slow at first, very tentative and vanilla and all that. It was about bringing us closer, you know? There wasn’t ever a point where the switch flicked, like one minute you didn’t love me enough for sex and then the next you did. Over time we worked out what worked for us, and it’s not, like, what everyone would consider an active sex life normal for two young men but it’s  _ ours. _ ”

“So we…”

Harry’s cheeks redden. “Do you want me to go into the nitty gritty?”

Louis hesitates and then he nods, his cheeks darkening to match Harry’s in colour. “I don’t know, I… maybe?” He goes even redder as he says, “I’m not… I don’t think I’m ready to have sex with you right now, at least… at least not at the moment. I hope that’s okay.”

“God, Louis, of course,  _ of course,”  _ Harry breathes out, shaking his head. “I mean it when I say we never need to have sex again if you… if you feel that’s right for you now.”

Biting his lip, Louis nods slowly and lets out a long breath that he didn’t know he was holding. “Okay,” he says, patting Harry’s cheek. “Okay. Thank you, that’s… that’s a weight off, I think.”

“I’m glad,” Harry hums, smiling softly. Another shake of his head. “I… what’s brought this on, can I ask? You can always ask me anything, of course you can, but you…” He sighs again and presses a long, lingering kiss into Louis’s tight forehead. “You just seem more wound up this morning than you have for a while.”

Harry might be his husband, and he’s probably seem Louis a lot worse than this, but Louis is still embarrassed. “It’s been bothering me for a while,” he admits, trying not to get choked up. “I don’t even know how long, but I mean, like, it was bothering seventeen-year-old me big time and now I just got thinking, you know?”

“I know,” Harry says, even though he definitely doesn’t. “Listen, though. It’s a big deal to you, I know that. I’ve been here through a lot of the tears and the anger and the everything, because when we first got together it was… it really upset you because you didn’t understand.”

“Didn’t understand what?”

“You didn’t understand how you could love me but not want sex with me,” Harry clarifies, voice low. “Which was heartbreaking because at first, we both thought you were just, oh, I don’t know, worried about losing your virginity, I guess?”

“Did you…” Louis doesn’t even know if he wants the answer to this question. “Did you have sex with a lot of people before me?”

Harry looks sheepish. “A fair few, I mean… I came out back home after we got back from Glasgow and then I did a bit of… of sleeping around. But I never fell in love with anyone before you. I think there was a bit of me that always loved you, even in those couple of years apart.”

“Oh.”

“Louis, look at me,” Harry says a little desperately. “Louis. The last person that I had sex with that wasn’t you was well over seven years ago. I can’t even remember half their names. It’s…  _ Louis,  _ please look at me.” He coaxes Louis’s face up with his thumb and forefinger, and Louis glares at him because he  _ hates  _ how jealous that answer has made him feel. “It’s literally always been you.”

Still glaring, Louis puts both his hands on Harry’s face and lunges forward, kissing him messily, hotly, possessively. It’s the first time he’s felt this way – hot, angry jealousy stabbing him deep in the gut at the idea of anyone else being near him.

The kiss has a lot of bite to it, and Harry moans into it before his hands slide down and wrap around Louis’s waist, drawing him in. It’s a long kiss, a messy kiss, and when they separate they’re still connected by a long string of spit.

Harry wipes it away and then giggles. “Louis,” he laughs, thumbing at Louis’s kiss-bitten bottom lip. “You gorgeous little thing. You’re jealous, aren’t you?”

“No,” Louis huffs, in a voice that clearly means yes. “I mean, okay, I am a little. But I think you would be too if you were on my side of things.”

Harry hasn’t stopped grinning. “Hell yeah I would be,” he simpers, threading his hands through Louis’s hair. “But really, I’m a big fan of anything that gets you to kiss me like that.”

Louis wants to keep glaring, he really does, but suddenly he’s being kissed again, and any semblance of control he has goes straight out the window.

He’s only human, after all. A human married to a very handsome young man to boot. He can’t really be blamed.

The conversation in bed that morning does wonders for their relationship, though, and Louis is ecstatic. He feels so much more at ease around Harry and is a lot more open to showing public and private displays of affection. They spend weekend mornings just making out in bed, kiss in front of their friends and their mums, and Louis even dares to give Harry’s bum some cheeky smacks when they’re out and about now.

The natural rhythm they’ve finally found themselves is just that – it’s natural. It warms Louis’s heart a lot to think about how far they’ve come in just a few short months, how much has changed and how nothing has changed both at once. Because as far as Louis can tell, they’ve fallen back into pretty much the same routine as before. They have the same friends and do the same things and kiss and laugh and do everything that young couples in their twenties should do.

He no longer feels like he’s seventeen either. He’s not sure he quite feels like he’s twenty-seven, but then again he doesn’t think that he’ll ever feel a day older than fifteen. But the growing up he’s done in the past few months has astonished him, his family, Harry, even his friends. And he likes this new him, he likes it a lot.

It’s funny really, because when Louis realises that he’s in love with Harry it’s not some big thing, some huge realisation that hits him hard and fast. It was something that he’d been psyching himself up for for a long time, but when the time comes to admit it to himself it’s easy, really, and definitely something that was a long time coming.

He tells Harry on a Friday night, when they’re rain damp and a little tipsy, stumbling back in from the pub just after midnight. Harry has a McDonald’s bag in one hand and he’s fumbling for the keys with the other, and Louis has an arm around his waist in a bid to stay upright as he kills himself laughing at the awful joke he just told.

“You’re the worst,” he cackles, swinging himself through the newly opened door and only stumbling a little over the mat. The gravel driveway had been a struggle, and he’s really looking forward to flopping on the sofa and tucking into his Big Mac. “ _ Whoops. _ ”

“Come on Louis Smith,” Harry smirks, a guiding hand on his back as he steps in the house and deadbolts the door.

“Who?” Louis asks as he snatches the food bag from him.

“He’s a gymnast… never mind,” Harry hums, obviously still amused. “Hey, come back here, I want my nuggets.”

Louis sticks his bottom lip at him. “Don’t you want to come and give me a cuddle?”

“Of course,” Harry says, kicking off his shoes and following Louis over to the sofa. Louis hands him his nuggets and Harry smacks a giant kiss onto his temple. “Fuck, I love you.”

“You’re not so bad yourself,” Louis coos, and he goes back to also kiss Harry’s cheek but he gets his mouth instead. “Ew, gross, you taste like ketchup.”

“Ketchup is amazing,” Harry says through a mouthful of masticated nugget. “And anyway, you weren’t complaining about the ketchup that Niall had all over his chips earlier.”

“That’s because Niall can’t take constructive criticism as well as you, baby,” Louis says sweetly. “And Niall doesn’t have to give me his chips but you do. I’m pretty sure you mentioned something about that in our wedding vows.”

Harry rolls his eyes. “Sure, babe. You just keep telling yourself that.” There’s a pause then, and he sighs loudly as Louis flutters his lashes. “Yes, alright, you can eat my chips.”

“I love you very much,” Louis says very seriously, then he realises what he’s said and he nearly chokes on his Sprite.

Harry  _ does  _ choke on his nugget, and there’s a couple of seconds where it’s completely standstill in the room before Louis leaps into action and thumps him on the back. Little bits of chicken fly onto the coffee table but neither of them pay any attention to that.

“Here, drink this,” Louis croaks and thrusts his lemonade at him. Harry grabs it and slurps it slowly, and Louis keeps rubbing at his back until he’s calmed down enough to start breathing properly again. “Baby, shit, I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Harry rasps, taking another swig of the drink. “Shit.” Another swig, and then silence.

Louis plays with his wedding ring, head bowed, but he knows that ultimately there’s no way he can go back from here. So he tosses his McDonald’s to one side and grabs Harry’s hands in his, pressing his greasy lips into his knuckles over and over.

“I meant it,” he says firmly, no room for argument. “I have for a while and I wasn’t ready to say it out loud, but I really do mean it.”

Harry’s eyes are practically bulging out of their sockets. “Say it again,” he demands.

“I love you,” Louis repeats, a grin creeping higher and higher up his face as he keeps repeating it. “I love you, and I’m so sorry it took me so long to get here but bloody hell, Harry, I love you so fucking much.”

“I love you too,” Harry all but sobs before he launches himself at Louis, snogging him messily for all he’s worth. Louis finds himself laughing into the kiss, not because it’s particularly funny, but because he’s so fucking happy he thinks he could burst. “I love you. I love you. Fuck, Louis,  _ fuck. _ ”

“Oi, oi,” Louis stammers between the frantic kisses, trying (and failing) to pull back so they can look at one another. “ _ Harry,  _ bloody hell. Look at me a minute.”

Harry pouts but he does as he’s told, resting his forehead against Louis’s. “Okay, but only if you say it again.”

“I was about to,” Louis laughs. “I love you so much, Harry Styles. I really do.”

“Fuck, I never thought I’d hear those words again,” Harry whimpers, and Louis hurries to wipe some stray tears off his cheek with his sleeves. “I would have waited a hundred years to hear them again but  _ fucking hell,  _ it feels so good to hear you say it.”

“You’re not going to be able to shut me up now,” Louis chuckles, wrapping an arm around Harry’s neck and tucking his face into his shoulder. “I know it was so, so shit what happened to me, Haz, but at least… oh, fuck, I just… I love you with all my bloody heart.”

More tears from Harry, and he clings to Louis tighter. “I know,” he sniffs, and even though he has snot on his face Louis can’t help but kiss him again, and again. “I know.”

And that’s that.

(They come downstairs the next morning to find that Fluffy has eaten most of their McDonald’s, but even he has left the gherkin abandoned on the carpet. Louis laughs until his lungs hurt, then kisses the sweet taste of jam and coffee off Harry’s lips until they have to go and meet Lottie for lunch.)

*

When Louis finally finds out who Z is, his first thought is that he really wishes he wasn’t in his pyjamas.

There’s a phone buzzing somewhere when he wakes up. He blinks a few times and then props himself up on his elbows, wondering why the hell Harry set an alarm on a day when they’re both not doing anything. So he shakes him awake.

“Haz. Harry. Turn off your alarm, you bloody twat.”

Harry doesn’t stir, but then the buzzing dies down anyway. Louis doesn’t think much of it after that, he’s too tired, so he flops back down onto the pillow and closes his eyes again.

The buzzing starts up again barely ten seconds later.

“What the fuck?” Louis hisses, then boots Harry in the leg. “ _ Harry.” _

Harry grunts and kicks him back weakly, then he blinks a few times, very disorientated. “Wha?”

“Your phone,” Louis grumbles, poking him in the tummy. His whole body jerks and he whines loudly, blowing his morning breath right in Louis’s face. “Har- _ ry.” _

Harry whines again as he scrabbles for his phone, blinking at it blearily before he grunts, “what the fuck?”

“Who is it?”

“It’s Liam,” Harry mumbles, then presses the accept button clumsily. “Li?”

Louis doesn’t hear actual words, all he hears is a scream.

“Wha…” Harry says blearily, yanking the phone away from his ear and glaring at it. “Liam? Li, what the…”

“I’m engaged!” the tinny voice of Liam shrieks, and Louis chokes on air. “I’m fucking engaged, Harry!”

“What the fuck?” Louis murmurs, eyes wide as he stares Harry down. “ _ Engaged?” _

“Is that Lou?” Tinny Liam asks before Harry can reply. “Lou, Louis!”

“Hi, Liam,” Louis calls. “Congrats, mate!”

“Let us in, we’re outside in the car!”

“What?” Both Harry and Louis say in unison, but then the call disconnects.

“I didn’t even know Liam had a partner,” Louis shrills. He glares at Harry. “Wait, is this… am I about to meet…?”

Harry shushes him and stumbles out of bed to look out the window, and just as Liam had said there’s an unfamiliar car parked on their drive.

Only that’s a  _ really  _ fancy car.

“Liam owns a Bugatti?” Louis asks Harry incredulously. “Just how much money does he actually make?”

“Oh my god,” Harry mumbles instead of replying, frantically scrabbling for pyjama bottoms. “You better fucking brace yourself.”

“What the fuck?” Louis says again, tying his dressing gown round his waist and trailing after Harry down the stairs. “What the actual hell is going on?”

Harry doesn’t answer. He makes a beeline straight to the door and he opens it slowly, and Louis watches from a couple of steps back as Liam gets out the passenger door…

And then Zayn fucking Malik gets out the driver’s side.

“Nnnngggh,” is all Louis can muster as he watches his childhood crush walk down the driveway, holding his best mate’s hand like he’s allowed to do that, like this is perfectly normal behaviour.

Zayn Malik, who won the X Factor the year before Louis applied.

Zayn Malik, who went on to be the teen heartthrob of that decade.

Zayn Malik, who according to the Daily Mail spends his days in LA, producing for Drake and Rihanna while living with his secret beau, name unconfirmed.

Zayn Malik, who Louis had his first wank over when he was seventeen.

Zayn Malik, who is still as gorgeous as Louis remembers.

“I told you to brace yourself,” Harry mutters, rather unhelpfully.

“I’m going to kill you,” Louis hisses, because he’s wearing a dressing gown and mismatched bed socks and  _ Zayn Malik is at his front door.  _ “I want a divorce.”

“Guys,” Liam squeals as he nudges through the door, waving his left hand in the air, now decorated with a diamond studded platinum band. But Louis isn’t looking at the ring. Louis is looking at Zayn Malik.

And Zayn Malik is looking right back.

“For Christ’s sake, Haz, you could have at least given him some warning!”

“Sorry!” Harry shrills, but he tucks himself under Zayn’s arm like that’s perfectly normal behaviour and watches Louis with him. Louis wants to kick him because he is currently bright red in the face and wearing fucking mismatched bed socks. “I was just… this was more important. Congratulations, both of you!”

“Thanks, Haz,” Liam chirps, beaming brightly as he cuddles into Harry’s other side. Louis still hasn’t closed his mouth, and when Zayn leans over to press a kiss into Harry’s hair the noise he makes is positively inhuman. “Lou?”

“Huuuuuh,” Louis rattles, shaking his head frantically.

“Louis Tomlinson, my bestest best mate,” Liam simpers, moving away from Harry and wrapping his arms around Louis’s shoulders before he can protest. “Apple of my eye, light of my life…”

Louis punches him awkwardly in the arm and then wraps him in a painfully tight hug, mumbling incoherent shit into his shoulder before Harry comes over and delicately peels him away, steering him towards the kitchen.

It takes a solid twenty minutes and a very sugary cup of tea to bring Louis back to life, but when he finally comes back with a crashing bump he doesn’t shut up.

“You kept this from me!” he shrills over and over. “Why would you do that?  _ How  _ could you do that?”

Zayn Malik is watching him from across the dining table, looking very amused. “Yeah, boys, how could you do that to our Lou?”

“This isn’t funny,” Louis hisses to him, eyes wide and a little manic. “This isn’t the kind of thing you keep from husbands you claim to love.”

Liam and Harry exchange glances. “Look, Lou, the last thing we wanted is for you to be mad,” Harry tells him, in a very parental tone. “But the thing is… you would have remembered Zayn from before you… before your memories went, you know? And you really fancied him in your teen years but he was bloody huge. We didn’t want to overwhelm you even more.”

Louis kicks him under the table.

“I am very overwhelmed right now,” he snaps over Harry’s loud cacophony of swearing and Zayn’s hysterical laughter. “Come on!”

“Fuck you,” Harry whines, rubbing at his shin. “It was Liam’s call more than it was mine.”

Liam shrugs sheepishly. “I just… look, it was  _ Zayn’s  _ call, not mine!”

“Originally it was my call,” Zayn says, turning to Louis. “But Liam was here more than me, obviously, so he was the one who decided we keep the lie going.”

Louis hears himself growl, which makes Zayn laugh all over again. He isn’t sure whether to be angry at Zayn for making that call or whether just to be thrilled that he’s making him laugh. He decides on the latter. “Rude,” he says with a shake of his head. “Really fucking rude.” He turns to Liam. “I thought we were friends, Liam. How could you?”

“We are friends,” Liam splutters, looking somewhere between panicked and affronted. “You know I always have your best interests at heart, Lou, always…”

“Oh, shut up,” Louis interrupts, and Zayn practically falls off his chair he’s laughing so hard. He grins before he says, “Right, come on then. Tell us your love story.”

Liam visibly relaxes a little when he sees Louis isn’t really that mad and launches into a tale about meeting in a club in LA through mutual friends and hitting it off straight away, then meeting again a week later to do some writing together for Krept & Konan. A few late night sessions, a little too much scotch, and some very sexual lyrics later, Liam had woken up one morning in the bed at Zayn’s penthouse and they’ve not looked back since.

“We’re not, like, hidden if you know where to look,” Zayn says, tucking Liam under his arm and squeezing. Liam hums his agreement and nods. “Everyone over here knows and I’m happily out to the media as bi, so is Liam. But we’re not ones to really, like, flaunt our relationship because when we’re working we want the focus of our relationship to be as professional writing partners, and not as boyfriends.”

“Well, to be fair I wasn’t exactly chuffed,” Liam says. “We did have some fights about it because I wanted to come with you to events and parties and show you off. I wanted to… oh, alright, I wanted to stake a bit of a claim on you.”

Zayn rolls his eyes and sighs. “Babe…”

“It’s fine though, it’s fine,” Liam jumps in and covers Zayn’s hand with his, linking their pinkies. “We’re over that now.”

Zayn smiles and brings their hands to his mouth, kissing the back of Liam’s several times. “Liam used to ring you and I used to ring Harry and we used to whine about the other to you,” he tells Louis. “You were both adamant that we should just declare it, you know?” He smiles softly. “It’s in the past anyway. The statement of our engagement is with my PR team and it’ll be announced next week. Hoping that we can hide up here in the Midlands for a bit, keep a low profile.”

“Watch girls’ hearts from all over the world break from the comfort of Zayn’s parent’s living room,” Liam hums. Zayn swats at him playfully.

“Originally I was a bit tentative but we’ve been together for a long time now and this felt… this felt right, you know? Time to settle down, maybe get something a little more permanent over this side of the Atlantic.” Liam grins at him and he sighs faux-dramatically. “Yes, darling, we get it. You got your way.”

“Love you,” Liam says, pecking him on the shoulder.

“Yeah, LA is great but my home is still over here. I miss my sisters and my mum and dad, and I don’t want to be over there all the time when you guys are over here,” Zayn continues. “It just feels like everything is falling into place at once, you know? Lou’s back, Liam’s sister’s pregnant, all that good stuff.” He nuzzles under Liam’s arm, palm resting on his chest. “I’m just really happy.”

“Awww,” Harry coos, reaching for a tissue to dab at his eyes with. Louis can’t stop smiling either, chuffed for the two of them in a way he hadn’t expected to twenty minutes ago. They look elated to be in each other’s company, and even though he still feels starstruck like never before, he’s warming to him more and more by the second.

“You guys,” he says, reaching across the table to pinch Liam’s cheek. “You  _ guys. _ ” He raises up his mug. “A toast then. To best friends and new beginnings.”

The other three echo the sentiment, and when he clinks his mug with Zayn’s and they share a smile, Louis sees a lot of love in his eyes. Love for his man, but love for the friends in the room too. It’s overwhelming but exciting, and he can’t wait to get to know Zayn better.

“I had my first wank to you, you know,” he announces a little later, when they’ve all got fresh cups of tea and Harry’s made a round of toast and jam.

Liam and Harry both choke on their drinks.

Zayn looks positively overjoyed. “ _ Really _ ? You never told me that.”

Louis stares at him. “Really?” he parrots, his cheeks now flaming. “Old me never told you that?”

Zayn shakes his head. “Nope, never.” He chuckles. “Damn, Lou, you sounded so proud of yourself back there. You really are seventeen, aren’t you?”

“Fuck you,” Louis splutters, ducking his head and chomping through his toast. “I thought you would have known.”

“I knew,” Harry pipes up. “But I didn’t want to bring it up. I didn’t want you getting any ideas.”

“Ah, so this _was_ partly your doing too,” Louis concludes triumphantly, keen to get the attention off his previous statement. “You are all in on it.” He pokes his sticky finger in the centre of Harry’s chest. “You were jealous?”

“Yes,” Harry says, unabashed, like this is a conversation they’ve had in front of Zayn before. “But then you married me and not Zayn, and I got over it.”

“I really want that divorce,” Louis says hotly, sinking back into his chair.

Harry gets him in a headlock for that, and by the time he’s wrestled his way out of it Liam and Zayn are snogging and murmuring things Louis can’t hear against their fridge while Fluffy paws at their feet.

Well. This  _ certainly  _ isn’t how he expected his morning to go.

(He isn’t complaining though. He’s still wearing his mismatched socks, but you can’t have everything.)

*

There isn’t a definitive moment, per se, when Louis realises his memory may be coming back. It isn’t like he wakes up in the morning, looks over at Harry, and all the feelings that he lost came rushing back. He doesn’t think that’s ever going to happen, and in a way, he isn’t sure he wants it to happen like that. Since their kiss he’s been falling deeper and deeper for Harry every single day, falling for his quirks and his puns and his ugly beautiful screeching laugh. He’s kind, caring, funny, charismatic, and drop dead gorgeous to boot, and it hits Louis like a freight train when he realises that actually, maybe he does want more.

But one morning, on a Sunday a few weeks after Louis’s declaration, they’re eating a slow breakfast together, and Harry’s flipping through some of his photo albums on Facebook from his iPad, showing Louis some of the events and parties they went to together at uni. And Louis remembers something.

“We were looking for a bathroom in this fucking maze of a house to have a bit of a snog in, right? And there had been a football match that day – our uni versus Birmingham Uni or something, and we went into this room thinking it was the bathroom but there was a couple inside fucking on the bed and the girl was screaming, “ _ yes,  _ Captain,  _ fuck me,  _ Captain.”

“Oh my god,” Louis laughs, shaking his head, and then he freezes, the laughter dying in his throat abruptly. Then he grabs Harry’s hand, stopping him from swiping to a new photo. “Ummmm.”

“What, Louis?” Harry grips his hand and studies his face, worrying his bottom lip between instantly. He looks so worried,  _ guilty,  _ almost, for making Louis react like that.

“Andy Samuels,” Louis stammers. His eyes are almost comically wide. “His name was Andy Samuels, am I right?”

Harry’s mouth drops open. He doesn’t answer, but he doesn’t need to.

Louis  _ remembers that. _

“Andy Samuels,” Louis repeats, and as he repeats the name again and again his smile gets wider, prouder, and he’s practically vibrating in his seat. “I remember that day.  _ Harry.  _ I remember that party.”

“ _ Louis, _ ” Harry says, laughter in his voice, and he darts forward and threads his hands around Louis’s neck, drawing him in for a delighted, sloppy kiss. Louis cackles and crawls into his lap, clutching at his shoulders because if he doesn’t he’s scared he’ll float away with happiness.

“Andy fucking Samuels, Harry.”

“Will you stop saying some other bloke’s name while I’m kissing you,” Harry scolds, but they know he’s not angry, not even a little bit. “Jesus, you’re such a demon.”

“I love you too,” Louis coos, pulling back enough for him to pepper kisses across Harry’s face. “I love you, I love you, I remember, I fucking remember,  _ Harry…” _

They don’t stop kissing for hours and hours, and Louis feels like he’s floating again. But they’re both still painfully aware that this is still only the beginning, that one tiny memory from their uni days coming back doesn’t mean that everything will.

Louis talks to his doctor about it in therapy later in the week, where she explains that it’s very likely that small moments like that are probably rising to the surface, probably have been for a while but there hasn’t been anything there triggering it. When Harry mentioned the more specific memory they could pull that memory to the surface, and it might do them well to go over more memories, particularly those of high emotional significance, as they tend to be stored in more than one area of the brain.

After that session, Harry and Louis sit on their living room floor for days on end, going through every single photo album that Harry has ever compiled. Luckily for them both he’s always been a meticulous organiser, so there’s physical copies with pages and pages of photos from their time at uni, their first home, their engagement, their wedding, literally everything that Louis might need.

Bits of it he’s able to remember flickers of, and bits he’s still drawing blanks on. He cries at his wedding photos, he laughs at his time at university, and gradually, all the stories that Harry tells him start to settle onto a timeline in his head. He was there, and other people have the memories of them, and it’s not ideal but Louis can still laugh along with them at the time he and Harry got thrown out of a club in Harry’s final year for exchanging blow jobs in the toilet, and the time when Harry got so drunk he threw up straight onto the centre of Louis’s chest.

They decide to make new memories too, and on the six-month anniversary of Louis’s accident they jet out to the Maldives, to the same resort where Louis proposed. Seven days of sun, sea, and cocktails pass in the blink of an eye, and they even try out some sex stuff that has Louis’s heart thumping against his ribcage and his eyes rolling to the back of his head.

He’s getting there with all of that.

And sometimes they’ll be out and about and another memory will remerge from somewhere, but after a while they learn not necessarily to dwell on those. Sometimes the best memories are the ones you make while you’re in the moment, whether you’re on a beach in the Maldives or having popcorn thrown at your head by all your friends for making out with your husband at a party.

They’ve got the rest of their lives to make some more.

_ * _

**_Epilogue_ **

“Harry?” Louis calls, glaring at his reflection in the mirror for the tenth time that minute. His clumsy fingers just  _ won’t do what he needs them to do  _ and he’s tired and a little hungover and he hates bow ties. “Harry, get your arse out here!”

Harry pops his head around the bathroom door, looking amused. “Yes, my sweet?”

Louis glares. “I need your help.” He grabs a side of bow tie with each hand and waves them about a bit. “I can’t do this piece of shit up.”

Harry rolls his eyes but dutifully emerges, his own bow tie pristinely done, much like the rest of him. He looks like an Actual Dream in his suit, and his recent haircut that took him from lengthy flowing curls to short back and sides leaves him looking even more debonair than usual. 

Louis hates him and wants a divorce.

“I want a divorce,” he announces as Harry’s nimble fingers work their magic.

“But then who would tie your ties?” Harry wonders aloud. There’s no worry in his tone; instead, a soft, fond smile sits bright on his face. “And who would wash your pants?”

“I could wash my own pants,” Louis grumbles, but they both know he’s lying. He’s been banned from laundry for life by Harry, after he tried to be nice one day and accidentally washed one of Harry’s white and grey Gucci shirts in with one of his red football tops. He’s surprised he still has his testicles, to be honest.

“I cannot believe of all the things you didn’t remember it was how to tie a bloody tie,” Harry says in lieu of humouring Louis about their not-impending divorce further. “You know, I am still pretty sure that this is just a rouse to get me close to you.”

He’s not wrong – although Louis  _ has  _ forgotten how to tie a tie. Over the past two and a half years he’s managed to locate pretty much everything he’s forgotten somewhere in his mind, but there are a few bits and pieces that still manage to elude him, and one of them just so happens to be tying ties. Luckily his work outfits are mostly jeans and jumpers, and even on show nights he usually opts for crisp button ups without the hassle of a necktie, but  _ still. _

And maybe he likes having Harry do this for him, just maybe. He likes the closeness it gives them both, the air of domesticity that they lost for those few months. Every time they do something like this and share that smile that grounds Louis, that reminds him why he wakes up in the morning and fought so hard to remember, he feels like he’s making up for lost time. And that means everything.

It doesn’t mean he’s not going to tease the shit out of Harry for pointing it out though.

Their faces are mere inches apart, and Louis can feel Harry’s warm, spearminty breath against his face. He’s looking incredibly amused, eyes sparkling and his tongue poking out cheekily, and Louis wants to bite it.

“Well, in that case, if it’s just a rouse to get someone close to me, I might see if Zayn…”

“Shut  _ up, _ ” Harry laughs, finishing the neat little bow before he slides his hands down and around Louis’s waist, hitching his smaller body closer to his. Lips find lips easily and Louis grins into the kiss, winding his arms around Harry’s neck and, indeed, pressing closer and closer to the man he loves so much.

“Still jealous of Zayn, even after all this time,” he hums, pleased. “Even on his wedding day.”

“Heeey,” wheezes Harry. His grip on Louis’s arse gets a little firmer, making Louis squeak. “He’s a shifty bloke, is that Zayn Malik. And anyway,” he pouts, “you know I’m only teasing. I just don’t like sharing.”

“Don’t I know it,” Louis grins, then kisses him again on the corner of the mouth, ever so softly. “You look very beautiful, my darling. You’re going to be the belle of the ball.”

“I  _ highly  _ doubt that,” Harry tells him. “I feel like eyes might be elsewhere, you know. Like on the grooms?”

“Nah,” Louis smiles, shaking his head and squeezing Harry just that bit tighter. “On you.”

Harry rolls his eyes again, but Louis knows how pleased little statements like that make him. Because Louis remembers  _ not  _ being able to remember, and he remembers hearing Harry cry himself to sleep and watching his face fall when Louis said something impulsive and hurtful. He remembers hating himself for not being able to love Harry, and he remembers how painful it was for Harry when he told him that that was okay, he didn’t have to love him, but he would always be here if he ever chose to fall again.

He can’t imagine that now. He can’t imagine life without his husband by his side, and he certainly can’t fathom why he let himself push the best thing that has ever happened to him away.

Thank goodness he came to his senses before it was too late.

At the time, it made sense, he supposes, but now it seems ludicrous, horrible, and painful for both of them to think about. He decided a while again he was never going to let Harry think for a single second that he wasn’t loved, cherished or coveted again, and he’s strived to keep that promise ever since.

Harry hasn’t complained yet.

“Shall we make a move?” he asks softly, eyes locked on Louis’s. Louis nods, the pair share a final kiss, and then they make their way out of their hotel room arm in arm, down to the foyer to meet the rest of the wedding guests.

The ceremony is beautiful – Zayn cries, Liam cries, Louis cries, Harry cries, even  _ Niall  _ cries, and the rest of the party aren’t much better. Both grooms look stunning in dark grey suits, hands clasped between them as they exchange their vows and promise to love each other for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, for as long as they both shall live. Once they’ve slotted their rings onto each other’s fingers they share a sweet kiss, and Louis knows it’s not polite but he stands up and whoops anyway, cackling as Liam flips him off.

The rest of the ceremony is a bit of a blur, with Harry and Niall going off to act as witness as they sign the documentation. From there they head outside, where waiters are swanning around with tall glasses of champagne and canapés. Louis helps himself to two glasses, one for him and one for Harry, and when his man is finally back with him he kisses him square on the mouth.

“You taste like smoked salmon,” Harry tells him, butting their foreheads together briefly before he takes the glass. He slides his free arm around Louis’s shoulders. “Have you got any more tissues?”

Louis snorts. “No, I ran out. Bastards. Who knew they’d make me cry like that?”

Harry laughs and kisses the top of Louis’s head. “I could have. Not every day that you get to watch your two best mates marry one another.”

“I swear they didn’t cry nearly as much at our wedding,” Louis grumbles, obediently following along as the crowd starts to move inside for the reception dinner. As best men they’re sat at the top table, in between Liam and his mum and dad. They find their seats and shake off their jackets, then Harry disappears once more and returns with a pint of lager for Louis and Jack and coke for himself. They work the room with practiced ease – everyone knows at this point that if you wish to speak with Harry, a Louis won’t be far away, and vice versa – and they end up having a long, merry chat with Zayn’s eldest sister Doniya and her partner, Zahid.

By the time the starters begin to be brought out to the tables Louis is jolly, on good beer and the incredible atmosphere that can only come from one of the happiest days of your life. He scoffs at Harry’s starter choice (“I don’t care if it’s Tuscan, baby, it’s still fuckin’ salad”) and makes a great show of how delicious his herb-crusted king prawns are, then steals the last of Harry’s lamb chops while he’s talking to Karen.

Everything is wonderful, and as Louis sips the head off his third pint he takes a moment to reflect.

“Hey,” he says quietly, gently touching Liam on the wrist. Liam turns, still grinning. Louis doesn’t think he’s seen him smile this much, well, ever. “I’m really glad I remembered you.”

“Oh my god, fuck off,” Liam whines, getting Louis in a weak headlock. “It’s meant to be my happy day, why would you remind me of that?”

Louis grins and smacks a kiss onto Liam’s cheek. “You love me anyway.”

“I love you  _ now, _ ” Liam chortles. “Back then it was a different story, you little shit.”

“You only didn’t love me for a couple of months,” Louis chirps. “Deep down you knew we were still bestie mates.”

“Deep, deep,  _ deep  _ down,” Liam grunts. Then he grins. “I'm glad you're back, dickhead.”

Louis rolls his eyes. “Thanks for asking me to be best man even though I made you cry.” He pauses. “And I used to fancy your husband.”

Zayn drops an arm around Liam's shoulders and leans in, amused. “Awww, Lou, tell us more about how you used to wank over me as a teenager.”

“Enough,” Liam shrieks, pulling Zayn closer and shooting glares between then both of them. “I've changed my mind, I’m finding a new best friend.”

“You would be lost without me,” Louis declares proudly, bumping his fist with Zayn behind Liam's back. “And anyway, I’ve got one hell of a speech planned, so buckle up, buttercup.”

Liam pretends to sulk for the rest of the course, then once the dishes are cleared away and he's finished off his pint he pours himself a fresh flute of champagne and uses an abandoned knife from the table to tap on it a few times, which makes the crowd go silent and turn to the top table expectantly.

He stands. “Hi everyone,” he greets, tucking a loose bit of hair behind his ears. It's almost longer than Harry's now. “If you don't know who I am yet my name is Louis, I’m the best man, and I've been Liam's best friend since university.” He grins and rests a hand on Liam's shoulder. “We met in choir, moved in together in our second and third years, and we've not looked back now, have we Leemo?”

Liam shakes his head, cheeks pink and pleased.

“I wish I could stand up here and talk about all the wonderful embarrassing memories Li and I have but I can't, because unfortunately I was in an accident nearly three years ago and memories don't come to me that easily anymore,” he says sombrely. “But the Liam I know now is pretty great. He still cries when watching Notting Hill and he's scared of mice and he can't cook to save his life, but we all still love him even though he once gave me food poisoning by microwaving chicken instead of cooking it in the oven like a bloody normal person.”

The audience laughs and Liam rolls his eyes, shaking Louis’s arm playfully.

“The funny thing is, I can't remember the early days of my friendship with Liam, but I remember the early days of Zayn Malik on the X Factor and I remember begging my mum for tickets and a poster and listening to his album on repeat.” More laughter. “Proper little fanboy I was.” He laughs and swaps his glass to his other hand so he can rest his palm against the back of Harry’s neck, tickling where hair meets milky skin. “Had my gay epiphany to Zayn Malik, yet here he is, marrying my best friend, and luckily for me I now get to call him one of my dearest friends too.” He grins at Harry and then at the newlyweds. “Don't tell my husband but he's still damn handsome, isn't he?”

Liam pretends to punch him in the stomach and Louis gets him in a headlock, and chaos descends until Zayn grabs Liam back and swats at him, tutting. But there's no anger, no malice, just pure, unadulterated fondness, and Louis decides to finish it up so he raises his glass.

“To Liam and to Zayn, two people who I never knew I needed until I found them. May you learn how to cook and may you always be beautiful, and know I love you both so much, so much.”

Liam wraps his arms around Louis’s waist and squeezes, and Zayn jumps up and wraps his arms around Louis’s shoulders, and the three of them stay there in that awkward embrace until the applause and cheering from the crowd has died down.

He sits down again, face only a little pink, where Harry immediately sweeps him up into a tight, tight hug, smacking a wet kiss onto his ear. Louis leans into him, content as anything, hiding his face in his warm neck as people coo and groan.

“I love you so much,” he mumbles, and Harry doesn’t say the words back but he clutches Louis tighter, and it’s more than enough.

Geoff rises to make his speech, and Louis readjusts himself in his seat, Harry’s hand comfortable and heavy in his lap. He laughs at their anecdotes and raises a glass to the newlyweds as instructed, and then an idea hits him, one that makes him turn eagerly to Harry. For a moment, he’s too happy and excited to even get his words out, and Harry just watches him expectantly for a couple of moments before he asks, “yes, Lou?”

“Let’s renew our vows,” he says lowly, practically vibrating in his seat. “Later this year. Let’s do it.”

“Sure,” Harry says easily, like he’s just agreed to standing up and grabbing them more drinks. “That sounds brilliant.”

“Really?” Louis says, his cheeks threatening to split his smile is that wide.

“Really,” Harry echoes, his eyes sparkling brighter than the stunning lights that dot the marquee. “I would love to, darling husband.”

Geoff sits down, the applause continues, but Louis pays it no attention – he launches himself forward and kisses Harry stupid, right in the middle of the second toast. Liam smacks him around the back of the head with a napkin, Zayn wolf-whistles, and Niall yells something so crude that it’s enough for Louis to break away in surprise.

“Put it away,” Karen laughs on their other side, but she’s also leaning into her husband, grin wide and cheeky, and Louis knows that everyone is happy enough to have this Louis back that they all let it slide.

“Can’t promise anything,” he giggles in a raspy voice, and Harry mirrors his laugh and reluctantly pulls away, squeezing his knee as he goes. “Alright, fine. But only because it’s their day. As of tomorrow it’ll be my day again.”

“What else is new?” he hears Liam mutter, which he ignores.

“Shall we do it in the Maldives so they can't come?” he stage-whispers to Harry, who tuts and shakes his head in exasperation. “What? That would be cute.”

“Cute if we win the lottery, maybe,” Harry balks. “Financially crippling if we don't.”

“Pessimist,” Louis moans, but then Harry kisses him before he can argue further, and for once he doesn't really mind being silenced.

The good mood lasts for the rest of the evening, and Louis is truly having the best time. He dances with Zayn, his mum, his sisters, Liam's mum, all his bestest friends in the world, and then a slow song comes on and he bids them goodbye to find his man, wrapping arms around his waist from behind. He spins him around and folds him into a tight embrace, beaming brightly as the band croon on about what a wonderful world it is.

“You've been taking lots of photos, I see,” Louis notes quietly, tilting his head to one side in the direction of the camera and selection of lenses that Harry has spread over a corner table. “You do know they hired a photographer so you could have a day off work, right?”

Harry pouts. “I would have done it for free,” he glowers, “and my shots would have been better.”

Louis laughs merrily, bobbing up to kiss the corner of Harry’s mouth. “You  _ are  _ the best photographer in the world, after all.”

“I am,” Harry says, grinning, and he leans down to press their foreheads together, swaying their hips together. “And anyway, I’ve taken loads regardless. And they're not even all of you.”

“You flatter me,” Louis drawls, shuffling closer as the band moves onto an Ed Sheeran song. “What are they of then?”

“The grooms. The dancing. The cake. The memories,” Harry explains, eyes glinting.

“You giant sappy bastard.”

“Call me what you want but you're the one going home with me tonight.”

“Oh, I don't know, I might ask if Zayn wants to…”

“Enough!” Harry howls, pulling out of Louis’s arms and moving away, and Louis laughs and flips him off before he shuffles off to the bar and orders them both another drink.

“Oi, Styles, get that camera out of my damn face,” he hears Niall screech, and he turns to see Harry jog back from where Niall and Laura were slow dancing (and probably snogging). “Louis.  _ Louis!  _ Control your…  _ thing!” _

Louis lets him keep snapping. Photos, as Harry pointed out, are memories, at the end of the day, and who is Louis to deny the world of more memories, beautiful moments captured in the flash of a camera.

Even though he's not sure Niall snogging his girlfriend really fits that category, but today he'll let that slide.

He picks up their champagne glasses and stands up, then ducks away to go and make some more memories with the people he loves.

 

**_FIN._ **

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!!
> 
> http://edendoratrust.org/donate/


End file.
